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Memorandum
BY
Mr. R. H. TAWNEY, Lecturer on Economics at the University of Glasgow, on the question of Compulsory Attendance at Continuation Schools
The question whether it is or is not desirable to make Continuation Schools compulsory, how best compulsion may be applied, and what the economic effects upon the employment of young persons in industry would be, can only be answered after a brief examination of the circumstances in which they are at present employed. If it can be shown that unemployment in manhood is in part caused by lack of facilities for obtaining adequate teaching during youth, the case for compulsory training is obviously strengthened. Moreover, the attitude of employers and employed towards the proposal to make evening school attendance compulsory depends upon the view which they take of the efficacy of the present system, in so far as any system can be said to exist. The following notes will describe the conditions under which different classes of youths are employed in Glasgow, will examine the connection between want of training and future unemployment, and will suggest that, while desirable on other grounds, compulsory Continuation Schools are essential in order to give the industrial training which many youths do not at present obtain in their daily occupations.
The information contained in the following notes was gathered from visits paid to about 100 employers in Glasgow and its neighbourhood, The industries of Glasgow which employ the largest number of boys may be seen from the following table, which is based on the last census report.
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Further, information as to the career during boyhood of 100 tradesmen and 150 labourers (mostly men now in distress) was obtained from various agencies in Glasgow. It shows the movement from trade to trade during boyhood and how large a number of boys are employed in occupations which give no industrial training.
The boys employed in industry fall into broad divisions: (I) Learners or apprentices who are employed, not for their immediate commercial utility, but in order to maintain or increase at a future date the supply of skilled workmen in the industry (e.g. the Apprentice Mason, Joiner, or Fitter, etc.).
(II) Boys who are not being taught a trade with a view to their practising it as men, but who are employed for their immediate commercial utility on some simple operations. These must be carefully distinguished from Boy Learners, and may be called Boy Labourers (e.g. Rivet Boys, Loom Boys, Shifters, Drawers off, etc.).
These two classes of boys are in fundamentally different positions. Class (I) is obtaining such instruction as the industry affords, whether that instruction be good or bad. Since most employers in most trades look far enough ahead to be desirous of maintaining a steady supply of skilled adults they usually are at some pains to give their learners as good a training as the circumstances of the industry allow. In connection with this class the question is: How far is the present method of training apprentices or learners satisfactory, and how far does it require to be supplemented? Class (II) is obtaining no instruction at all of any kind, good or bad, such as will qualify the boys in it for future employment when they leave their present occupation and seek work elsewhere. If this class can be shown to be large, it is hardly necessary to ask whether a compulsory system of training is desirable for it, as its desirability is obvious.
I. The Training of Apprentices or Learners
The characteristic of the training by means of apprenticeship, which has been traditional in this country since the middle ages, is that the boy is at once learning and working. He gets his education by being allowed to execute operations which have a market value. The obvious advantage of such a system is that the boy receives a training which is practical and which is acquired in the atmosphere of business, not of school. Employers sometimes complain that the manual training given at Elementary Schools is "play". It makes the boys careless with tools and fills them with theories
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which have to be knocked out of them. Workshop training teaches the valuable lesson that a thing is no use unless it will sell. The disadvantage of the apprenticeship system is that the boy's training is liable to he interrupted, narrowed down, and even altogether destroyed, by changes in the organisation of industry over which the individual employer has small control and the boy none at all. It is the prevalence of such changes, the continual introduction of new methods, processes, and machinery, the subdivision and specialisation of labour, the instability of business conditions caused by severe competition, which make unsatisfactory a training which is given solely in the workshop, and which make it necessary in the interest of the boy's future career that such training should be supplemented by a knowledge of principles acquired in a school. The most important of the changes which have gone far to destroy the value of training received through apprenticeship may be summed up under the following heads:
(a) In the majority of industries, at the present day, employers do not take boys as apprentices until they are 15 or 16. The industries at which apprentices are taken at 14 are painting, plumbing, printing (compositors), and iron moulding; the period of training is in these trades seven years. Most other industries take boys for five years and apprentice them nearer 16 than 15 years of age. Thus the rules of the Masons' Society do not allow boys to be taken as apprentices before 15. The rules of the Breadbakers' Society do not allow them to be taken before 16. The agreement between the Federation of Shipbuilding Employers and the Boilermakers' Society does not allow apprentice riveters to be started in shipyards before 16, and, in practice, owing to the great strength required for riveting, apprentices often do not start before 18 years. Apart however from these fixed rules, most of the employers who gave information as to the age at which apprentices should start thought 16 was young enough. In the case of engineering, building, joinering, baking, and sawmilling, 15½ to 17 years may be taken as the normal age for starting apprenticeship. Now, since most working-class lads leave school at 14, the fact that they are not taken as apprentices till about 16 means that a gap of about two years usually intervenes between the time when they leave school and the time when they settle down to learn a trade. During these two years they are engaged in temporary occupations which are no preparation for their future careers, which impose no responsibility or discipline upon them, and which are often of such a nature as to encourage them in youth to purely casual labour. The following table of the occupations entered on leaving school by boys who afterwards became
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tradesmen will show how almost invariably lads' enter these stop-gap occupations.
As I shall show later some of these occupations are harmful in themselves, apart from the fact that they give no kind of industrial education. But what I wish to emphasise here is that it is a very serious thing that so many lads, on being released from the discipline of school, should enter occupations which are purposeless in the sense of being no preparation for future life. The existence of this gulf between the Elementary School and the beginning of any kind of industrial training which makes it necessary for them to enter these occupations, is an obstacle at the very outset of their careers; it prevents many from ever beginning to get any adequate training at all and diverts the less firm of purpose into low-paid, casual, or otherwise undesirable employments. In the words of an engineer who was formerly a teacher, "In the two years between 14 and 16 a boy forgets most of what he has learned at school"; unless the school age call be raised (which would be best of all), compulsory Continuation Schools are essential if only to see that a boy does not lose his education before he even starts working at the trade by which he is to live.
(b) The growing specialisation of processes makes it increasingly difficult for a boy who enters a workshop as an apprentice or learner to obtain a knowledge of the trade which he means to follow, sufficiently general to make him a good all-round workman who can adapt himself to different classes of work and the varying needs of different firms. He tends to become unduly specialised at a very early age, with the result that if he is displaced from his particular job, he finds more difficulty in getting another than he would if he knew all sides of his trade. The nature of this excessive specialisation can best be realised by contrasting engineering firms which take pains to give an all-round training with engineering firms where early, and, I think, premature
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specialisation prevails. A is an electrical engineer employing altogether 191 journeymen and 85 apprentices; of the engineers, 48 are fitters and 19 turners; of the apprentice engineers, 33 are fitters and two turners. All the boys are learners; they do not specialise early as fitters or as turners, but learn both fitting and turning, being moved on to as many different machines as possible so as to give them a good all-round training. Eighty out of 85 apprentices employed in all departments attend Continuation Schools, and the firm encourages them to do so by moving the boys with the best records on to the jobs where they learn most. Much the same system is adopted by another firm, whose boys start in the fitting shop; then go to the machine shop, where they are promoted gradually from one machine to another; then spend their last year at fitting. A boy thus obtains a good all-round training, and finally is qualified to take a job either as a fitter or as a turner.
In a considerable number of shops, however, boys are specialised either as fitters or turners and do not learn both sides of the trade. Thus one firm states: "Boys are kept as a rule in their own departments. They are not taught; they are made to work." Another: "Boys are specialised from the beginning; to shift a boy proficient in one department to another would not pay." Some firms again distinguished between boys who are to get a general all-round training and boys who are to be kept to one department of the work. Thus, in a locomotive works employing about 4,000 men and turning out an engine per diem, there are three classes of apprentices: (a) Premium apprentices (i.e. lads who wish to occupy the higher positions in industry); these pass through all departments, moulding, pattern shop and drawing office. (b) Privilege apprentices. These are lads who, either because they are exceptionally clever and keen or because they are the sons of old employees, are moved from one department to another and learn fitting and erecting, turning, boiler mounting and possibly enter the drawing office. (c) The ordinary apprentices who, of course, form the vast majority. They are apprenticed either as fitters, as erectors, or as turners; for in this firm specialisation is carried so far that fitting and erecting, which are almost almost always combined, are here separated. On entering the works the lad who is going to be a fitter goes straight to the fitting shop and learns nothing else; a lad who is going to be a turner goes to the machine shop and does not learn fitting. Moreover, within the machine shop specialisation has proceeded still further. There are a large number of machines which are worked, not by men who have served their time and acquired a general knowledge of machinery (i.e., qualified turners), but by youths who are
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kept to a single machine, who become capable at that particular kind of work, and who, unless exceptionally clever, do not get a general knowledge of machinery or become competent to work a lathe. These specialised machine-minders form a growing proportion of the total number of mechanics employed in engineering works, owing to the continual invention of simplified machines adapted to the particular class of work done by particular firms; and some employers state that the "engineer" of the future will be a specialised machine-minder at 22s. to 28s. [£1.10 to £1.40] a week, instead of the man who has served his time and who earns in Glasgow 36s [£1.80]. The machine-minder may be either an adult labourer or a boy. At present the Society in the trade does not allow lathes to be worked by any but qualified engineers. But on drilling, milling, slotting, punching, band-sawing and screwing machines it is quite common to employ these specialised machinists who have had a few days' or even a few hours' training, and who are not competent to work any machine save that to which they are specialised. This tendency to narrow down the education of the learner to a single process, and thus to lessen his opportunities of obtaining a general all-round training is not confined to engineering. The same thing has happened in the case of the boys employed in woodworking industries where much machinery is used. Thus a timber merchant employing sawyers in one department and cabinet-makers in another, states: "There is no regular training system; a boy learns incidentally and is only shifted from one machine to another when the shop needs it; there is thus a tendency for boys to become specialised on one machine." This firm gave as an instance of the length to which specialisation had proceeded the fact that one of its employees was the best producer of wooden rings in Glasgow but could not make a wage at turning a table leg, and adds "that with the exception of a few old men who were trained under the apprenticeship system, the foremen are the only men with all-round skill". Again, in the case of breadbaking it is stated that "all-round men are not trained in Glasgow shops", and that the best men "come in from the country where the training is more efficient because the division of labour has not proceeded so far". Master masons say that "country-bred men are the best", on account of the fact that they have had a better all-round training. In plumbing, painting and carpentering, it is stated that some employers engage a large number of apprentices by whom they get work done cheaply and who are only half-trained. Thus some years ago there was a strike of plumbers, caused (as I am informed by an employer) by the fact that certain employers doing a low class of work would send a large number of half-trained
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youths with only one or two journeymen to execute it, with the result that men were displaced, and that the boys had no chance of learning the trade properly.
The motive to this further and further specialisation of all kinds of work, including that of boys who are ostensibly learners is, of course, cheap production for a wide market. In the words of an engineering manager, "To put an apprentice on a valuable machine means waste of money unless he is specialised to it, and in all trades the longer a boy is kept at one process, the sooner does he begin to be economically profitable." The effect of this system is to make it hard for the boy thus trained to find work outside his own narrowed niche. Thus the Secretary of the Brass Moulders' Union states: "In some shops the work is highly specialised and the boy is kept at single processes, e.g. he may learn only to make flanges. The result is that when he comes into a shop were a different class of work is done he does not know now to set about it and so cannot get work, or keep it if he gets it. These untrained workers recruit the unemployed. I know a young man who has for this reason been through seven jobs in six weeks." An employer says: "Few men can now do more than make one special part of the particular class of tool we make. This has caused the work to be produced quicker and cheaper, but it tends to make the workers in a sense unskilled and very dependent on the fluctuation of that kind of work." Another employer, speaking of the difference between lads who go through several departments and those who are specialised, says of the former: "When they come in they can take up a position either as a fitter or a turner, and therefore have a better chance of regular employment." The District Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers says of a particular firm which employs several thousand men making a particular kind of machine; "It is a reception home for young bakers and grocers; Boys go to it from other occupations and are put in the mechanics' shop to do one small part of a machine. They serve no apprenticeship. They are paid by the piece and are really in the position of labourers working automatic machines. When these boys leave they are not competent engineers, and find it difficult to get work elsewhere, except perhaps in a similar capacity in motor shops."
If it were necessary, further evidence from workmen and employers could be adduced to the same effect. But it is obvious (1), that under modern conditions specialisation is inevitable; (2) that the less all-round training a youth receives the less the openings available to him if his particular job is lost, as it may very well be. At his own line he may
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earn higher wages than the all-round man. Outside it he is helpless, because the range of work within which he is useful is narrow and he has never learned to adapt himself to different positions. Specialisation, which commercial exigencies make inevitable, has made the workshop training, taken by itself, inadequate.
(c) The apprenticeship system is unsatisfactory, because the control which an employer can exercise over his apprentices is, under modern conditions, so small. The Indenture system is not found, as far as I know, in any trade except building, in which apprentice masons are bound under a signed indenture for a period of five years. Indentures are, however, of very little practical value. Even, if a boy who runs away is taken before a magistrate, and the magistrate orders him to return, he comes back unwillingly and is more trouble than he is worth. Thus a large builder and contractor says: "We find the greatest difficulty in getting boys to apply themselves. They stay away frequently in the morning and run away after two or three years to get employment in country districts. Yet there are plenty of prospects in the trade; we cannot get sufficient competent foremen though they earn from £3 to £5." No doubt employers are always disposed to look back upon their own youth as a time in which all boys were virtuous; but there is abundant evidence to show that the very small control which is all that can under modern conditions be exercised over apprentices by employers, has destroyed a great part of what was valuable in the old system. In the case of shipbuilding, the apprentice riveters are notorious for their had habits. They are piece-workers; two apprentice riveters make up a squad with a holder-on and rivet boy. Hence, as a shipyard manager says, "they come and go as they please. They are as bad as the men at staying off and stopping the work of the squad". This is confirmed by a writer in a monthly report of the Boilermakers' Society to which riveters belong, who points out how demoralising to the boys is the want of discipline. "From their very entry into the trade most of the bad time-keepers are taught to be casual workers. Taken from the rivet fire irrespective of their character, education or environment, they are put to the tools to do piece-work, given work that is of a casual character on account of its being piece-work, allowed to leave the firm whenever work is not ready, having in fact five years' training as casual workers ... Would any employer treat his own son in such a manner?" It is interesting to notice that in a letter to the last number of "Shipbuilding", Mr. Cummings, the General Secretary of the Boilermakers' Society, has suggested that Continuation Schools should be made compulsory.
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(d) Even when apprenticeship gives a good training in the trade as it exists at the present day, it is not by itself an adequate preparation for industrial life, for the reason that the methods of production in nearly all industries are liable under modern conditions to be revolutionised by discoveries and technical improvements such as the introduction of machinery or of different machinery, to contract owing to competition, and to fluctuate under the alteration of commercial prosperity and depression. Now apprenticeship as a system of training was developed when industry was stable, methodical and regular, and is not suited to an age when it is unstable, changing and irregular. A boy undertakes to serve seven years or five years in order to acquire a trade. But after his skill has been laboriously acquired, it may at any moment be rendered entirely unnecessary by changes in the organisation of industry. The greater his skill in one particular class of work the less easy does he find it to take to another. What is required in addition to manual dexterity is general industrial knowledge and intelligence, which will enable him to adapt himself to changing industrial conditions. But such general adaptability is not given by apprenticeship. Hence apprenticeship is apt to be a risky investment, and not to repay the sacrifice of time and money which it involves.
To sum up: Apprenticeship by itself does not give a training which fits boys for modern industrial conditions. It begins too late and therefore leaves them during two critical years without any serious occupation. It specialises them to too narrow a range of work. It does not discipline them mentally or morally. It does not prepare them to fend for themselves when displaced from the particular position which they occupy. To supplement these deficiencies it is desirable to make compulsory education in the principles of different trades. Before, however, going on to discuss this it is necessary to refer to the large class of boys who are neither learners nor apprentices, and who, though they are often overlooked, constitute at once by far the most serious part of the problem of boy labour and the chief argument for the establishment of compulsory Continuation Schools.
II. BOY LABOURERS
The second class of boys employed in industry consists of those who are not apprentices or learners, but who are being employed solely with a view to the present utility of their labour. The following figures show the occupations entered on leaving school by 150 lads who afterwards became labourers.
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Attention is particularly called to the fact that of the above list of occupations there are a large number in which boys are employed from 14 to 19, but which offer no permanent position at man's wages. They differ from the so-called "skilled trades" because the work performed by the boy, instead of being in the nature of training, is a specialised compartment for which his sole qualification is the fact that as an instrument of production he is cheaper than a man. Examples of this kind of worker are those boys who call themselves labourers pure and simple, of whom a considerable number, 30 out of 150, were in existence at the early age of 16. They are engaged in all kinds of work, some are general labourers, some in foundries, some in saw-mills, some as builders' labourers, some at the Docks. The majority of them, however, are entered above as "in factories or works, not as apprentices or learners", and are employed as loom boys, doffers[*] or shifters in weaving factories, rivet boys in boiler shops, oven boys in bakeries, "drawers off" in saw mills, packers in soap works, machine-minders in furniture factories, labelling bottles in mineral water factories, turning the wheel for rope-spinners, and in numberless other such positions, in which they are performing some simple operation, often as an assistant to a man.
In connection with these positions in factories or works, some of which have been enumerated, three facts should be noticed which are of importance in connection with the question of unskilled and casual labour.
(1) They usually give no kind of industrial training, either special or general, such as to enable a boy to find a fresh situation when he leaves them. From the point of view of the boy they are not an avenue into a future career; they are a blind alley leading nowhere. From the point of view of the employer, the class of work done is a species of light unskilled labour, which does not require either the intelligence asked in a boy who is learning the trade, or the strength demanded from an adult unskilled workman, and which therefore can be
[*Doffers removed full bobbins or spindles from carding machines.]
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done by a sort of boy labourer. Thus the work of a loom boy consists in assisting men at the loom, seeing that the supply of yarn does not run short, giving in broken ends, cleaning looms, and generally waiting on the weaver. In some factories no men labourers are employed, and the boys then do all the unskilled work; they do not obtain any knowledge which would enable them to do weaving, for which a formal apprenticeship is necessary, nor are they fitted for anything else. In a similar position as this, large numbers of boys are employed in soap-works, packing, wrapping and filling soap-powder packets. Again the boys tending machines in the biscuit department of a bakery are neither apprentices nor learners, and though they may acquire a certain rough handiness in dealing with machinery, it is only of the most rudimentary kind. A large number of boys are employed in saw-mills as what are known as "drawers off," whose duty it is to carry wood to and from a machine which is worked by a man and generally act as his labourers. Much the same is true of cloth-finishing works, where a great many boys are employed taking cloth to and from the drying machines, and watching machines under the supervision of a competent man. All these different instances, which could probably be multiplied indefinitely were an extensive inquiry made, are cases in which the boy's work is simply a specialised compartment which gives no kind of qualification for future employment outside it.
(2) Not only are the boys in these occupations receiving no industrial training, either general or special, but the vast majority of them will be dismissed at manhood, or whenever they begin to ask for an adult's wages. This is not because they are inefficient workers, or for any other personal or accidental reason. It follows regularly and inevitably from the way in which the work is distributed between boys and men. The absolute impossibility of their being absorbed as men in the occupations which they started as boys is shown clearly by the following figures of the number of boys and men employed in certain businesses. In order to prevent all risk of identifying the firms concerned, the actual figures are not given; but the proportion between boys and men - the only point of importance - is the same as that really existing:
(1) A Weaving Factory - men 120, apprentices 6, loom boys 120. (2) Soapworks - men 98, boys 114. (3) Bakery, Bread-making - men 96, boys 8; Pastry-men 60, boys 7; Biscuits - men 12, boys 41. (4) Contractor, Lorries - men 148, boys 50, Tracing - boys 9; Vans - boys 10. (5) Sawmills - Machine shop - men 78, boys 64; Turning-men 30, boys 4; Chair shop - men 38, boys 14. (6) Finishing Company, Store Mills - men 40, boys 40; Drying-men 28, boys
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26; Raising - men 10, boys 18; Pressing - men 96, boys 10; Odd hands - men 18, boys 2.
It will be seen that in the first two cases the number of boys actually exceeds the number of men employed. A workman employed in the weaving factory estimates that 5 per cent of the boys employed stay with the firm as men, and that of those who leave, 75 per cent do so because it is impossible to find work for them at men's wages. He insists on the irreparable damage that is done to the boy's future, and says he would dissuade any boy he knew from undertaking the work. That is in no way the fault of the employer concerned; on the contrary, he is well known to go to trouble and expense to increase the comfort of his employees. It is simply because the work is of a character which can be done by boys, and therefore boys, being cheaper than adult labourers, are employed to do it. This particular class of boys, loom boys, doffers or shifters, is to be found in greater numbers in Dundee than in Glasgow; it may therefore not be inappropriate to quote the remarks on this subject contained in the Report of the Dundee Social Union, which confirms strikingly the opinion here expressed as to the effect upon unemployment of the type of unprogressive boy labour: "The demand for men's labour would have to be three times as great to provide work for all these lads (i.e. who are in the jute industry) and a number whose parents have sent them to mill or factory as children are turned adrift at the age of 17 or 18. A few of them became skilled workmen in other trades. (But even) if a boy is not too old to become an apprentice to some trade, he may earn half, or less than half his accustomed wage. (Apprentices in most trades start at 6s. and rise after five years to 12s. or 14a.; hence, after three years, a boy may be earning half what he could get as a labourer.) Some boys become labourers in other trades, others enter the Army ... a number leave the town to seek work elsewhere, while others live from hand to mouth as casual labourers,* or join the ranks of the permanently unemployed." The evil is, of course, aggravated in Dundee by the fact that most of the adult workers are women, with the result that there are fewer places for adult men. But the cases quoted above are sufficient to show that it exists in very many different kinds of business. Take, for example, the case of the (2) Soapworks; in these
*For a similar account of the fate of boys formerly employed in "laying on" and "taking off" paper in London printing houses, see Toynbee Record, "Report on Boy Labour". These printers' boys' were stated to enter the Army and take to the Docks; a large number of printers' labourers were found in the Whitechapel Casual Ward in the course of an investigation made into the previous employment of the men there.
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the boys actually exceed the men and they work in different departments; there is no movement from one to the other because a strong full-grown man is needed to do the man's work (as a matter of fact they are mainly immigrant Irishmen). None of the boys, the Manager states, stay beyond 20. The position of lorry boys in (4) has already been examined. The officials of the Carters' Union state that there is an enormous leakage of lorry boys into other occupations, and the figures show that this may be so. In the case of the Saw-mills (5) and the Cloth Finishing Company (6), the boys do not actually exceed the men in number. But it is plain that even were there absolutely complete mobility between all the departments, a large number of the boys employed would have to leave the trade at manhood. As a matter of fact, 80 per cent are estimated to leave at manhood in the one case, and 95 per cent in the other.
A general application may be given to the examples quoted above, if one considers for a moment what are the causes determining the demand for boys in different occupations, and in particular how the demand for boy learners differs from that for boy labourers. The considerations which determine the number of boys taken on by (say) an engineering firm, or by the bread-baking department of the bakery described above (3), are fundamentally different from those which settle the number of loom boys, rivet boys, or boys in the biscuit department. of the same bakery. In industries requiring much dexterity or intelligence, the number of boys entering the trade is determined, not by the demand for such work as they could do if they were immediately set to a single specialised operation, but by the estimated future demand for journeymen. Even where no formal agreement exists as to the proper proportion of apprentices to journeymen, as it does in the case of bread-baking, this is the criterion to which both employers and workmen habitually appeal when the former are claiming that the number of apprentices shall be increased, and the latter that it shall be diminished. Real learners are always an expense, and as long as boys are taken on with a view to teaching them so that they may recruit the trade, there is no temptation for employers to take on more than are required for this purpose. Hence a boy who enters, for example, a machine-making or bread-making establishment, will, if he is moderately intelligent and fortunate, find a place in it at a man's wage. If he leaves, he leaves because the trade does not suit him personally, not because it is unable to absorb all those who enter it as boys, but when there is no need to recruit a supply of thoroughly trained journeymen, or where many departments of the work are such as can be done by the relatively cheap boy instead of by the relatively expensive
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man, there is always a force at work tending to increase the employment of boys without any reference to the openings in the industry which there will be for them when they reach manhood. To put it concretely, the number of lorry boys, or loom boys, in Glasgow bears no relation to the number required for recruiting lorry men or weavers, or to anything more remote than the number of cart-tails and looms now in existence, and the number of boys who can be induced to sit on the one and serve the other. In the words of an employer, "boys are employed for their present commercial utility. That "utility", which is to be found in the fact that the wages of an adult labourer in Glasgow is 16s. to 20s., while that of a boy (e.g. loom boy) is 8s. to 12s., ceases at manhood; and with its cessation, employment ceases as well. But, as has been already pointed out, he has learned nothing which will qualify him to do any other kind of work. What then can he do? He can do nothing, but fall back on the possession of two arms and two legs, and either enter the Army (see the report of the Dundee Social Union), or increase the over-supply of labourers, and therefore the irregularity of employment in the low-skilled labour market.*
The figures given on page 12 show how large a proportion of these boys "employed in factories and works" ultimately become labourers. But this may perhaps be seen more clearly if the occupations entered on leaving school by 100 labourers, chosen at random, be compared with those of the same number of tradesmen:
Out of 30 learners or apprentices 23 became tradesmen, 7 became labourers.
Out of 84 messengers or milk boys 51 became tradesmen, 33 became labourers.
Out of 20 van or lorry boys 9 became tradesmen, 11 became labourers.
Out of 5 trace boys 2 became tradesmen, 3 became labourers.
Out of 9 labourers - became tradesmen, 9 became labourers.
Out of 48 in factories or works 12 became tradesmen, 36 became labourers.
Out of 4 miscellaneous 3 became tradesmen, 1 became a labourer.
*An excellent example of the different prospects of the "boy" learner and the "boy" labourer is given by comparing the breadbaking and biscuit departments of the bakery mentioned above. Eight apprentices (five years' apprenticeship) are held, with the approval of the employer, to be sufficient to recruit 96 journeymen bread-bakers, yet in biscuit-making 41 boys to 12 journeymen are employed. Some of these boys recruit the eight apprentices; of the remainder, it is said "some go to other trades; the rest drift into casual employment."
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III. The relations between boy labour and unemployment may be seen by looking at the applicants for relief to the District Committee in Glasgow. The figures show: (a) The usual preponderance of unskilled labourers. (b) A. large number of men who apply one year after another and who are regularly out of work (out of 2,199 men investigated in 1906-7, 20.9 per cent had applied to the Committee in previous years). (c) A large number of young men among the applicants. During the last three winters (1904-5, 1905-6, 1906-7), 3,273 men under 30 years of age applied for relief to the Glasgow District Committee.
The explanations of this permanent unemployment or casual unemployment (as distinct from unemployment caused by seasonal or cyclical fluctuations of trade) is to be found in the existence of a supply of low-skilled labourers in abundance greater than is needed to satisfy the demand for that particular class of work. This surplus is continually being recruited by youths who at manhood leave the positions which they had as boys, and, having no industrial qualifications, are obliged to take to unskilled labouring. In order to do away with this casual employment it is necessary to cut off as far as possible the stream of boys entering the unskilled labour market. This would be done were the State to aim at prescribing, as a condition of full employment, a minimum of industrial efficiency, in the same way as it has prescribed a minimum of general education. The effect of such legislation would be to enable youths to distribute themselves over the whole field of industry according to the demand for their services, making an infinitesimal addition to each trade, but greatly relieving the congested ranks of unskilled labour.
But it would be much more than this. To describe these youths, and the men which they become, as "unskilled" or "untrained", gives but a faint picture of the state of demoralisation which exists among some of them, and which is, in fact, caused by using boys of 15 simply as instruments of production which are scrapped when they are no longer remunerative - in employing them, in fact, for their "immediate commercial utility". One symptom of this demoralisation is the inability of boys to remain in one job for more than a year or even a few months at a time. When the stimulus and restraint given by the desire to learn are absent, the only incentive is that of immediately higher wages, and these boys move from job to job with a mobility which is positively nomadic. Here are some specimen copies from inquiry forms:
(1) T. T., Apprentice labourer, and the son of a brass finisher, left school at 11, and is 20 years of age. He gave the following particulars of his first 6 places: (a) Delivering milk, at 4s. a week, stayed 3 months, left because of a
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quarrel. (b) Message boy, 6s. and uniform, 6 months. (c) Message boy, 7s., 2 months; sacked for destroying instead of delivering messages. (d) Message boy, 5s., 7 months; found work too heavy. (e) Van boy, 8s., over a year; left because of a "row." (f) Weaving mill, working with drawer and serving him with yarn, 8s. 6d., 2 years; mill failed. He was not asked for further particulars. Note that he went through 6 places in less than 5 years and learned nothing.
(2) H. B., at present a labourer, and son of a moulder, left school at 12, and is 20 years old. He gave particulars of the following 6 places - his first 6 employments: (a) Van boy, 5s., 3 weeks; left because "fed up." (b) Van boy, 7s. 6d., 4 months; left because "tired of job". (c) Lorry boy in brewery, 5s., one month; left because "tired of job". (d) Message hoy, 6s. 6d., one week; left because he was hurt, and, was idle for 6 months. (e) Driving van, 8s., 6 weeks; left, because "he did not get enough for driving horses" (the substitution of boys for men as drivers is one of the complaints of the Carters' Union). (j) Saw-mills, "drawing-off machine," 9s., 3 months; left because he wanted "more money", and went to be a "trace boy".
(3) M. A. (a C.O.S. Case), at present a biscuit-cutter and son of a plumber, is 23 years old, and left school at 13. He gave the following particulars as to his first 6 employments: (a) Message boy, 5s., 2 months; left to go to biscuit factory. (b) Cleaning biscuit pans., 5s. 6d., 4 months; "Left to go to G. D.'s for more money". (e) Oven boy, 11s., 7 months. "Left to go to L.'s for more money". (d) Oven boy, 12s., 18 months; left for more money. (e) Assistant, brakesman in bakery, 15s. one year; left for more money. (f) Brakesman, 16s., for 4 months; after that returned to L.'s (a bakery); then went to labour in a mason's yard at 22s. a week; then went to Giffnock quarries at 26s., where he stayed for 4 weeks; then became a crane driver at 26s. a week; then went back to L.'s. And all this before he was 23 years old.
(4) M. O., a storeman, and son of a joiner, is 24 years old, and left school at 14. He gave the following particular's of his first 6 employments; he is exceptional in having begun to learn a trade: (a) Van boy 2s. a week, and 3 meals a day; "Got another job". (b) Message boy, 4s., 6 months; "Work too heavy". (c) Taking samples round for Metal Polish Company, 6s., one year; "Left to get bigger pay". (d) Taking samples round for another Metal Polish Company, 8s.; left because "father advised him to begin a trade". (e) Apprentice, engineer, 6s., 2 years; left because "pay too small as an apprentice". (f) Labouring, 18s., 1½ years.; left because he could not agree with his foreman.
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(5) T. G., Casual labourer, son of retail shoemaker, is 27 years of age and left school at 14: (a) took rolls to customers for a baker, paid 2d. in the 1s., 6 months; left "to better himself". (b) Lorry boy, 7s., 1 year; "Wages too small". (e) Clothier's message boy, 5s., 3 months; left "to get more wages". (d) Bottle-washer in brewery, 10s., 12 months. (e) Saw-mills, working a saw, 12s., 8 months; left for "slackness of work". (f) Ice store, 24s., 8 months. At the age of 27 he had never earned more than 24s., and never remained in a place more than a year.
(6) H. B., a labourer, 24 years of age. Gave following particulars: (a) Drove trace horses for saw-mills, 10s., 5 months; "Sacked for galloping horse". (b) Pottery, packing, 12s., 2 weeks; "Lazy and chucked it". (e) Foundry moulding (not apprentice), piece-work, 2s. 8d. a week; "Couldn't make enough". (d) Iron roofing works, at punching machine; 14s., 6 months; "Fed up". (e) Selling Guides to Glasgow Exhibition, 30s., 6 months. (f) Saw-mills again, "German saw," 12s., 4 months; sacked. And so on till now, without definite employment in the last 6 years. He was able to count up and actually gave names and addresses of employers in 50 or 60 different jobs he had been through.
It would be possible to multiply indefinitely cases such as have been given above, showing the utterly undisciplined life led by these boys. The same facts are put in another way by some statistics kindly supplied me by the Chief Constable of Glasgow as to the "number of youths between the ages of 14 and 21 charged with theft and other offences inferring dishonesty, including those remitted to the sheriff court during the year 1906."
(a) Total number charged (boys under 21), 1,454.
(b) Messengers, Street Traders, Hawkers, Labourers, Carters, Rivet-heaters, 1,208 or 83.7 per cent
(c) Tradesmen in 20 trades, 110 or 7.5 per cent
(d) Miscellaneous (Soldiers, Schoolboys, Waiters, etc.), 136 or 8.8 per cent
Yet the total number of boys under 21 employed in (c) of course far exceeds those employed in (b).
At the present moment these boys are probably the most neglected class in the community. To poor parents they are often commercial assets to be realised as soon as the law allows. Organised workers, with left-handed kindness, prevent them from overcrowding some trades, and indirectly intensify the struggle in others. Employers, with the best intentions in the world, cannot possibly be expected to point out to lads who are clamouring to sweep their shops, clean their machines and run their messages, that their services will cease to be acceptable as soon as they demand a man's wage. The only way of preventing them from recruiting the ranks of low-paid irregularly employed adult workers, is to make their labour
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scarce and dear by law, and to insist on their obtaining an industrial education in a Trade School.
Evening Classes
The following questions naturally arise in connection with Evening Schools. (a) Whether they should not be made compulsory. The total number of students attending Evening Schools in Glasgow for the session 1905-6 was 22,899. Since the published School Board Report does not distinguish students of different sexes, or state their ages and occupations, it is impossible from published reports to say what of all youths between 14 and 20, or of youths between 14 and 20, in any one trade are attending evening classes. The following figures may give a rough idea of the proportion of youths in two highly skilled trades attending evening classes.
These figures are very rough, e.g. some apprentice masons may be attending, not building construction, but other classes. Conversely there are certain to be a good many boys attending classes in workshop mathematics who are not employed in the metal machine group. As they stand they suggest that even in the trades demanding the highest technical skill comparatively, a comparatively small portion of the boys employed attend evening classes.
An indication of the attitude of employers towards Evening Schools is given by the answers returned to our question, "Do you encourage apprentices or other employees to attend Evening Schools or other classes?"
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The answers given were sufficient to show that the majority of employers recognised that Evening Schools helped their business. In most cases however, "encouragement" does not mean much. It varies from putting the notices before the boys, to paying half or full fees, rewarding attendance by promotion or money prizes, and even, as in one case, making it a condition of employment. On the whole it seems true to say that the more anxious an employer is that his boys should attend schools, the less satisfied is he with the present system. Again and again have we had statements such as, "Paid fees but boys would not attend"; "Gave money for fees to boys, but they spent it and did not attend"; "Classes good, but not generally taken advantage of"; "Very uphill work", and so on.
It must be remembered that these despairing answers come from firms who employ the most highly skilled and intelligent workmen, and who are willing to go to trouble and expense in order that their apprentices may attend evening classes. When one turns from these to occupations in which the boys are not learners but labourers, the very idea that it is any use their attending evening classes disappears. "You do not want a Professor to work a machine" fairly expresses the sentiment of some employers, while it simply does not occur to boys who are not acquiring any industrial qualifications in their daily employment that they ought to acquire such qualifications outside it, to provide for the time when they ask men's wages and leave their present position. Yet, as has been shown above, it is precisely for these boys that industrial education is most necessary, because without it they obtain no qualification for employment in manhood. A voluntary system may catch the apprentice, but it cannot catch the labourer. For the self-interest of employers is enlisted on the side of technical education for apprentices. But no one has any interest in seeing that the "mere labourer" attends school - no one, at least, except the public, who at present supports him with relief.
(b) Assuming that the principle of compulsion is accepted, the question arises whether, if it is to be effectual, it should not be accompanied by a reduction of hours for all boys under 17. Several employers have said to me that at the end of the day boys are too exhausted to attend classes. This was stated by a textile manufacturer employing loom boys, by a boiler-maker employing rivet boys, and by others in different trades. Teachers say the same thing. "The night school system is murder on those who have to go", says one. His pupils are mostly apprentice engineers. Some leave him at 10 o'clock. They go as far as Rutherglen, getting home at 11 o'clock; by 6 o'clock they have to be
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down at Clydeside, which means leaving home soon after 5. Another teacher says, "Boys are pumped out before they get to the night school"; another, "Night school pupils are often very sleepy"; another, "'You cannot get children to take an interest in the night school after a hard day's work". That it is impossible for boys in some occupations to get any good from continuation classes, without a shortening of hours, can be verified by anyone who goes round a boilershop and watches the riveters and rivet boy at work.
Compulsory evening classes without a reduction of hours are better than nothing, but a reduction in hours would make them twice as beneficial, especially to the boy labourers who need them most.
It is a question, therefore, whether after clause (1) of section 8 of the Scotch Education Bill, 1907, should not be inserted the words, "Provided that on the days on which attendance at evening classes is required, the hours of work of young persons under 17 shall not exceed six per diem exclusive of the hours spent at the evening classes, or 10 per diem inclusive of hours so spent*."
*The above memorandum was written in 1907. Provision for the reduction of hours of labour in certain trades for pupils in Continuation Schools was made in the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908.
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Memorandum
SUBMITTED BY THE
Tutorial Classes Committee of the University of Oxford
Summary of the Work done by the Oxford Joint Committee from January to April 1909
A statute was passed through the Convocation of the University of Oxford on October 27th, 1908, empowering the University Extension Delegacy to form a committee consisting of working-class representatives in equal numbers with members of the Delegacy. The Joint Committee* thus constituted desires to submit to the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education a short account of its first session's work, in the belief that the experience obtained by it of the desire of workpeople for higher education and of the difficulties by which their studies are beset should be given due weight in the formulation of any proposals which may from time to time be put forward for the further development in England of "Continued Education".
During the session 1908-1909 classes were conducted by the Joint Committee at the following places:
Chesterfield | Oldham |
Glossop | Rochdale |
Littleborough | Swindon |
Longton | Wrexham |
The number of teachers employed was three, one taking five classes, one taking two, and one taking one. Each course of lectures consisted of 12 classes, and each class lasted for two hours, an hour being given up to the lecture and an hour to discussion. The subjects studied were Industrial History (except at Swindon) and Economics (at Swindon).
The students were almost entirely manual workers, with a slight intermixture of school teachers and business men.
*The following are the Members:
UNIVERSITY MEMBERS | WORKERS' REPRESENTATIVES |
The Dean of Christ Church (Chairman) | D. J. Shackleton, M.P. (Vice-Chairman) |
Prof. H. H. Turner, F.R.S. | W. H. Berry |
Prof. M. E. Sadler, M.A. | C. W. Bowerman, M.P. |
A. L. Smith, M.A. | Richardson Campbell |
S. Ball, M.A. | J. M. Mactavish |
L. L. Price, M.A. | A. Wilkinson |
W. Temple. M.A. (Hon. Joint Secretary) | A. Mansbridge (Hon. Joint Secretary) |
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Their age and occupation are shown in the following tables:
TABLE I
TABLE II
Occupations
It will be noticed from the above tables that over half of the students (60.5 per cent) were under the age of 34. This is a highly satisfactory feature, both because it proves the interest in education taken by the younger generation of workpeople, and because a student who enters the classes when he is comparatively young is more likely to profit by them than one who is advanced in years. Nearly all the students, as to whom particulars are available, were workpeople in the narrower sense of manual workers, 59.1 per cent being drawn from three groups of trades, engineering, textiles, and building, and the rest being scattered over a large number of different occupations. Of those who are not usually classified as "workpeople" the majority belonged to working-class families and were engaged in occupations (for example, as shop assistants) which, though distinguished by convention, are not in practice distinguishable from those employing artisans and labourers. It is gratifying, further, to note that many of the students are members of working-class organisations, such as trade unions and co-operative societies, as well as political organisations of a predominantly working-class character, and that several of them take a prominent part in the work of their societies in an official capacity. In short, the personnel of the existing eight
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Tutorial Classes may be said to be recruited almost entirely from the younger and more energetic members of the manual working-classes, who are keenly alive to civic questions and desire to improve their knowledge of them by impartial study.
The attendance of the students at the classes was highly satisfactory. All of them seem to regard the class as a serious engagement to which all others - except such as were absolutely unavoidable - must be postponed. Particulars are set forth below.
TABLE III
Attendances
Chesterfield | 96.3 per cent of possible attendances. |
Glossop* | 83 per cent of possible attendances. |
Littleborough† | 77 per cent of possible attendances. |
Longton‡ | Average attendance of 28 out of 38 entered. |
Oldham | 87.5 per cent of possible attendances. |
Rochdale§ | Average attendance of 28.9 out of 37 entered. |
Swindon | 89 per cent of possible attendances. |
Wrexham | Average attendance of 27.5 out of 30 entered. |
The paper work required from the students was the essay per fortnight, or 12 essays in the course of the session. It is not possible to present in tabular form the paper work done. But the tutors report that essays have been written with regularity, and that students who were unavoidably prevented (for example, by illness or overtime) from finishing them in the course of the session, are availing themselves of the six weeks after the end of the session allowed by the committee to make up the required number. The essays varied in quality, as was natural in view of the dissimilar practice and experience of the writers. But nearly all improved very greatly in the course of the session, while some reached a very high standard indeed, and would bear comparison with those done by first-class students in the Final Honour Schools at Oxford. Many of the students have expressed to the
*If the defective attendance of three who were compelled to retire and four admitted late be omitted, the percentage of actual to possible attendances at Glossop was 93.5.
†If three who retired before the class began, and one who retired after four attendances, be omitted, the percentage of actual to possible attendances at Littleborough was 93.
‡The Longton Secretary writes: "At the beginning of the session in October, 38 students were in the class. Before Christmas eight of these ceased to attend, owing, in six cases at least, to unavoidable causes. The chief reason was unemployment."
§The Rochdale Secretary writes: "I am satisfied that the absences have been due to illness, trade unions or professional duties, sickness at home, and similar unavoidable causes."
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teachers the great advantage which they are conscious of deriving from regular practice in putting their thoughts upon paper.
While the Joint Committee is of opinion that the experience obtained from the eight Tutorial Classes now in existence is most encouraging, it is met by certain grave difficulties which spring from the conditions of English educational and industrial organisations, and to which it thinks attention should be directed. (i) The deficient previous education of some of the students makes it very difficult for them to express themselves on paper. It sometimes happens that between the time when a student left the elementary school as a child, and the time when he enters the Tutorial Class as a man, his school equipment has become rusty, with the result that he finds difficulty in regular reading and writing and in giving a coherent shape to his ideas. There is an urgent need for bridging the gulf between the elementary school and manhood in some way. (ii) The prevalence of overtime and unemployment is a terrible handicap to the working-class student. Overtime, sometimes carried on night after night, exhausts his strength and leaves him neither time nor energy for serious study. Again and again keen students have reluctantly been obliged to put off writing papers because they have reached home so late as to have leisure only for a hasty meal.
The greatest single obstacle to the extension of adult education by means of evening classes is to be found in the long hours of labour. How small a guide the nominal hours in any trade are to the actual hours worked is shown by the following return obtained from an engineer who is a member of the Longton Tutorial Class:
In this instance, if the student had worked the normal hours, he would have worked for 636 hours in the course of the 12 weeks. In reality he worked 848½ hours, or 212½ in
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excess of the normal hours, and that at a time when trade was stated to be unusually depressed. It is a noteworthy fact that this particular student wrote in those 12 weeks nine papers, or three more than were required of him, in addition to doing some statistical work which was of benefit to the class as a whole. But in the case of less robust constitutions the strain of prolonged overtime, superimposed on hours which are already often too long, is crushing, and we desire to record our opinion that much of the apparent indifference of some classes of workpeople to higher education, as well as much physical debility, is due to the nervous exhaustion induced by systematic overwork. We do not presume to offer any suggestion as to how this great evil should be met, but until it is met the continued education of five-sixths of the nation will be attended by very serious difficulties, and we desire respectfully to raise the question whether it is not desirable that a public inquiry should be made into the prevalence of overtime and its effects upon continued education.
Unemployment is a different, but not less serious, obstacle to the work of the Tutorial Classes. This again can be illustrated by the experience of Longton. In the words of the secretary of the class, "The chief reason (for students abandoning the class) was unemployment; some of the students being reluctantly compelled to give up the class owing to their seeking work elsewhere ... Long hours of labour, overtime, anxiety and restlessness caused by uncertainty or want of employment, lack of facilities for home study, all these are factors which militate against achieving the fullest measure of success in any scheme of further education for industrial students, for whom the prime necessity is to work for a livelihood." We are informed by one of the tutors that he has watched individual students, who began work with enthusiasm and capacity, gradually sink through unemployment into a state of mental despondency and distress, in which every thought of education gradually disappeared before the question, "How shall I earn a living to-morrow?"
We have called attention to these evils because they are closely connected with our work, and because we think that the point at any rate might well form the subject of an investigation by the Board of Education. But, in spite of them, the work of the Tutorial Classes has been so encouraging, and has won so much approval among workpeople, as to suggest that nothing but money is needed for their wide and beneficial extension.
Signed on behalf of the Joint Committee,
W. TEMPLE,
A. MANSBRIDGE,
Joint Secretaries.
Oxford,
April 1909.
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Index (image-only pdf file - 3.8mb)