origin in the medieval handicraft work. The training of the people in those days was in the hands of the gilds, of which, at the end of the fifteenth century, there were thirty thousand in England alone. There were gilds for most of the breadwinning arts in which men engaged craft gilds, art gilds, merchant gilds, trade gilds.1 Boys were apprenticed to men following an occupation such as the youth or his parents preferred, and then began the training. The period of tutelage was fixed in most cases at seven years. The apprentice usually lived in the house of his master, who provided him with board and clothes and taught him the art and mysteries of his trade. The master and the pupil were in a sense on a plane of equality, inasmuch as both came from the same social class, and the pupil looked forward to the time when he himself would be a master. At the conclusion of the term of service the young man became a journeyman workman. He usually wandered away from his native town, sometimes going over seas to learn the foreign secrets of his craft. After three years of such experience, he presented evidence of his accomplishments. "If 1 Note, for example, Rembrandt's famous painting in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam, entitled Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Gild. he were a craftsman or an artisan, he made a lock or a bolt or some more artistic piece of work in the metals base or precious, and if this sample was considered worthy of them by his fellow-gildsmen, he was admitted as a master in the gild. This was the highest rank of workman, and the men who held it were supposed to be able to do anything that had been done by fellow-workmen up to that time. The piece that he presented was then called a masterpiece, and it is from this that our good old English word masterpiece was derived."1 1. Legal Indentures. — In early times apprenticeships in the United States were much like the medieval system. Legal indentures were the rule, in which the boy was bound to a manufacturer, merchant, craftsman, or mariner for a period usually ending at the youth's majority. Both parties appeared in court and swore to carry out the terms of the contract. For the boy the indenture involved a loss of liberty, for if he ran away, he was classed in effect as a slave. He lived with his master, like 1 Education: How Old the New, by James J. Walsh, Fordham University Press, New York, 1910, p. 158. For the facts of American apprenticeship the author is indebted largely to Bulletin No. 19, 1913, of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, entitled German Industrial Education and Its Lessons for the United States, by Holmes Beckwith. his medieval predecessor, and like him he did odd jobs by which he learned nothing and by which his apprenticeship was unduly prolonged. The industrial revolution discussed above and the expanding ideas of personal liberty caused the indenture gradually to grow into disfavor, and by 1860 it had so far declined that it was the exception rather than the rule. The effect of the discontinuance of a legal contract is illustrated by an incident within the personal knowledge of the author: (1) A Concrete Case. -A certain boy named Joe was apprenticed in the year 1870 to a manufacturer to learn the trade of carriage painting. There was only a verbal contract, by the terms of which Joe was bound for two and a half years to do such work in the shop as the employer might direct. He was required in addition to perform household drudgery in the employer's family, such as running errands, setting the table, washing dishes, and cleaning house. The employer on his part agreed to teach the boy the trade of painting and trimming carriages. There were at that time only four trades involved in building a carriage; namely, those of the wheelwright, the blacksmith, the painter, and the trimmer. The boy was therefore to be taught |