APPRENTICESHIP OF TO-DAY
A true apprenticeship system, as already explained, must satisfy three
conditions: It must guarantee the adequate supervision of the youth of the
country as regards physical and moral development until the age of
eighteen at least is reached; it must supply means of effective training,
both general and specialized; and, finally, it must provide to those about
to cross the threshold of manhood an opening in some form of occupation
for which definite preparation has been given. The efficiency of the
industrial organization of to-day must be judged by the extent to which
these three conditions are satisfied.
To what extent does the apprenticeship of to-day satisfy the conditions of
a true apprenticeship system? To answer this question we must look far
beyond the narrow limits of indentured apprenticeship as it still exists.
It touches only a fringe, and a vanishing fringe, of the problem. Life for
the youth has grown more complex since the passing of the old organization
of the gilds; its success or failure is the outcome of the interplay of
numerous forces. Four factors contribute, in a more or less degree, to the
result. There is the contribution of the State—the last chapter was
concerned with the description of the machinery which has slowly been set
up during the age of reconstruction—we have yet to test its influence in
the actual working; there is the contribution of philanthropic enterprise,
as represented in the religious bodies, the clubs, the apprenticeship
associations, and skilled employment committees; there is the contribution
of the home, with its discipline and training; and, finally, there is the
contribution of the workshop, using this term to include all forms of
occupation, with the methods of entry and the organization for securing a
supply of labour. Only when we have taken into account the effects of
these four factors can we pass judgment on the apprenticeship of to-day.
I.
The Contribution of the State.
In estimating the contribution of the State towards apprenticeship of
to-day, it will be convenient, as in the last chapter, to trace the effect
of this influence in two sections, the one devoted to a survey of the
results of State regulation, and the other to an examination of the
achievements of State enterprise.
§ 1. STATE REGULATION.
In its scheme of regulation the State has aimed, broadly speaking, at
securing three results. It has endeavoured to prevent boys from being
overworked or wrongly worked; it has sought to guard them from being
engaged in demoralizing forms of employment; and it has striven to secure
satisfactory conditions within the walls of the workshop.
The third task presents the fewest difficulties. Medical science is
sufficiently advanced to prescribe the conditions as to ventilation,
heating, sanitation, and cubic contents essential to the health of the
boys. The sad catalogue of accidents is sufficiently long to show where
danger, through inadequately guarded machinery, is probable. To enforce
the necessary regulations is comparatively easy. There must be a suitable
number of inspectors, and these inspectors must be specially trained for
their work. Neither condition is at present fulfilled. The staff of
inspectors is much too small, and the inspectors themselves frequently
lack the requisite technical qualifications.
In the work of guarding boys from being engaged in occupations
demoralizing to character, the State has only recently taken the first
steps. The Employment of Children Act prohibits street trading under
certain conditions. As will appear later in this chapter, there are a
large number of occupations where regulation is much required. Indeed, it
is a comparatively new idea that the nature of the employment of the boy
may have a profound influence on the well-being of the man.
In the department of regulation the most elaborate machinery has grown up
around the attempts of the State to prevent boys from being overworked or
wrongly worked. The difficulties in the way of success have been two.
There has been the difficulty in getting the necessary law passed. In this
respect it is enough to mention that the “half-time” system, in spite of
practically universal condemnation, is still permitted, to show the almost
insurmountable obstacles presented by vested interests. There is next the
difficulty of enforcing the law. It is often urged that it is idle to
place on the statute-book laws which can easily be evaded. Too much weight
must not, however, be given to this argument. There is a moral effect in
the passing of every law. The fact that the State has condemned certain
modes of action is an important factor in the formation of public opinion.
Many people realize for the first time that the evils which are the result
of conduct hitherto regarded as harmless, because not regarded at all, are
sufficiently serious to call for State interference. The law may not have
its full effect; it will without doubt have some effect.
The question of enforcement is, however, of vital importance, and it is
well to consider the limits of the power of enforcement.
The best method of restricting the hours of employment is to see that the
boy is somewhere else during part of the working day. The half-time
system, which insured that the boy should spend half his time in school,
was established, not primarily with a view to his education, but to
prevent him from being overworked. It has, moreover, from its point of
view, been completely successful, and has in practice been enforced
without difficulty. The various laws relating to compulsory attendance at
school have exercised an influence more potent in the work of limiting
the hours of employment than all the other elaborate regulations on the
subject. If we see to it that a boy is in school, he cannot at the same
time be found in the factory. The machinery for enforcing attendance now
runs without difficulty, and its action is uniform and comprehensive.
The next method of restricting employment is the method of prohibition.
Here, again, enforcement presents no serious difficulty. If we forbid
children under a certain age to work for wages or to take part in certain
forms of occupation, it is enough to find them so engaged at any one
moment to secure a conviction.
The third method, which seeks to prevent boys from being overworked by
setting a limit on the number of hours during which they may be employed,
is almost impossible to carry out. The Shop Hours Act is frequently
infringed, and only the most rigid system of inspection can get evidence
of cases of infringement. Yet even here detection is comparatively easy. A
watch can be kept on the number of hours during which a shop is open, and
if this exceed the legal limit we have a fair presumption that the shop
assistants are over-employed. But in the case of children we cannot draw
this conclusion. We are supposing their hours are more limited than in the
case of the adults, and the mere fact that the shop is open during a
longer period affords no proof that the child is there all the day on all
days of the week. To enforce regulations of this kind we must set a watch
on the individual child, and on a large scale this is impracticable.
In judging of the results of State regulation, as described in the
preceding chapter, we may assume that the regulations are enforced—or at
any rate are enforceable—where employment is prohibited, or where
attendance at school is required, but that regulations which entail the
counting of hours have little effect in preventing overwork except by the
indirect method of forming public opinion. Further, when we are seeking a
path of reform, we must take the road of prohibition or alternative
attendance at school.
Leaving general considerations, and coming to details, it may be said
that, so far as children under the age of fourteen are concerned, the
system of State regulation, though a little cumbersome, covers a
considerable part of the field, provided always that local education
authorities make full use of the powers conferred by the Education Acts,
the School Attendance Acts, the Children Act, and the Employment of
Children Act, and provided also that the Board of Education and the Home
Office render full and cordial support. Unfortunately, these provisos are
very far from being fulfilled. More than 58 per cent. of the population,
for example, live in districts where the attendance by-laws allow of
conditional exemption at the age of twelve.
It is true that in nearly half the cases a fairly high standard of
attainment is required from the children, but with the remainder no higher
standard is required than that reached by the normal child at the age of
twelve.[91] Or, again, in connection with the Employment of Children Act,
out of seventy-four county boroughs, fifty have made by-laws in reference
to street trading, but large towns, like Leeds, Nottingham, or Salford,
have made none. Out of 191 smaller boroughs and urban districts, only
forty-one have made by-laws; and out of the sixty-two administrative
counties, other than London and Middlesex, only one.[92] It may fairly be
assumed that, where no by-laws relating to street trading exist, little is
done to enforce the other provisions of the Act.
As regards young persons, if we exclude the Acts relating to mines, which
affect a comparatively small number of lads, the Shop Hours Act, with its
mild provisions of seats for assistants and a maximum week of seventy-four
hours, the only Act which can be said to exert a large measure of
supervision is the Factory and Workshop Act. Assuming that the system of
regulation there found is adequate, and adequately enforced—both
assumptions far from being fulfilled in practice—there remain the young
persons who do not come within its provisions. The number of these is very
large. In the next chapter figures are given relating to the occupations
of London children on leaving school and between the ages of fifteen and
twenty. A study of these tables will show that not more than at most a
third of the young persons are brought within the scope of the Factory
and Workshop Act. A large proportion of the lads engaged in the building
trades, and practically the whole of those employed in shops, in
transport, in commerce, and in general labour, are excluded. In their case
there is no State supervision to regulate the conditions of their work.
Coming to concrete examples, the van-boy may in all kinds of weather spend
a dozen hours a day lolling on the tail of a cart, idle for much of his
time, and for the remainder holding the horses outside a public-house, or
lifting weights too heavy for his strength. The errand-boy, none too well
clad or shod, may, delivering parcels and messages, trudge through the
cold and rain over long leagues of streets during long stretches of the
week. The office-boy may be cooped up in a dark and ill-ventilated office
during most of the hours of daylight. The shop-boy may stand ten, twelve,
or on Saturdays fifteen hours of the twenty-four in the street or in the
shop, with one eye on the goods and the other on a penny novelette. And
there is no public authority to say whether the conditions of his
employment are satisfactory, no power to have him medically inspected, no
possible guarantee to insure that when he passes the threshold of early
manhood the vigour and the brightness of youth shall not have given way to
the feeble health and the torpor of old age. Unquestionably, we owe much
to sentiment for the evils it has denounced and remedied, but we owe also
to the régime of sentiment the fact that some two-thirds of the young
persons in the country are engaged in occupations carried on without
regulation and unvisited by any inspector of the State.
§ 2. STATE ENTERPRISE.
The most signal example of State enterprise in the realm of boy labour is
to be found in that huge organization of schools, elementary and
continuation, which now cover the country, and whose efficiency is rapidly
increasing. The organization has already been described; it remains to
summarize briefly its principal effects. First, the boys attend school
with astonishing regularity. An average percentage of attendances during
the year of ninety-five, and even more, is become common. Truancy is rare,
and growing rarer. The truant schools are being gradually emptied, and
several have been closed. This result is no doubt in part due to the
increased fine for non-attendance, and the pressure thus placed on the
parent. But excellent attendance implies much more than the elimination of
the truant; it means that, after making allowance for absences due to
illness and other sufficient causes, the boy attends school with perfect
regularity and punctuality at all times when the schools are opened. Now,
this ideal is in the case of the vast majority of boys attained. The
result must be attributed to the influence of the teachers over the boy.
Prosecution of the parent may cure gross irregularity, but perfect
attendance can only be secured by enlisting the co-operation of the boy.
The first effect of the school, then, is seen in the almost unqualified
regularity and punctuality of the attendance. If we reflect on the home
conditions of many of the boys, we shall be compelled to pay a high
tribute of praise to the work of the teacher. The second achievement lies
in the admirable order maintained within the walls of the school. Ready
obedience is the rule, and not the exception. This is in general not the
result of a system of harsh discipline—corporal punishment is decreasing
at once in severity and in frequency—it is due to the personal influence
of the teacher. In the third place, a spirit of industry and active
attention pervades the work of the school. In discussing with the
authorities of secondary schools the career of the children who have won
scholarships from the elementary schools, I have more than once been told
that the chief characteristic of these scholars lies in their patient and
strenuous diligence. In this respect they serve as an admirable example to
the fee-paying pupils. It is true that the scholars are picked children,
but ability and diligence are, as experience shows, by no means
inseparable companions. Here, again, we see the effect of the school.
Finally, the schools are institutions which make for character in the best
sense of the word. The moral training is gradually freeing itself from the
“do and don’t” of the home, and is beginning to reach the higher level of
morality where the command is “to be this, not that.” A standard of school
honour is being sought for, and sometimes attained. To take a single
example. In what is perhaps the poorest school in all London, set in the
most squalid and vice-haunted region, it has been made a matter of honour
with the boys who are receiving school dinners to come to the headmaster
as soon as the home circumstances temporarily improve and say: “I don’t
want a dinner this morning, because father has got a day’s work.”
Habits of regularity, obedience, and industry, and the cultivation of a
sense of honour—these are the chief results of State supervision carried
out by means of the schools. Two questions require an answer: Do these
qualities, found within the precincts of the school, overflow and affect
the conduct of the boys outside the school? Do they last when school-days
are over, and the boys gone out to work? With regard to the first, there
is good reason to believe that they do overflow. The school training does
influence the conduct of the boys outside. No one who has watched a
zealous headmaster replace an ancient and inefficient teacher of the old
type can fail to have observed a striking change in the behaviour of the
boys as seen in the street and in the home. With regard to the second
question, we must reply that undoubtedly in many cases the qualities
gradually disappear. When we come, as we shall do shortly, to the survey
of the conditions of boy labour, we shall not be surprised at this
unfortunate truth. It would be difficult to imagine any form of training
that would be permanent when all discipline is relaxed or entirely
discontinued at the most critical period of the development of the boy.
The elementary school is now made responsible for the supervision of the
health of the children. Medical inspection of all children is now
compulsory, while medical treatment is made legal. The education authority
may also draw on the rates to provide meals for necessitous children. It
is too soon to estimate the effect of these new powers, but if they are
used with wise generosity they should exercise a profound influence on the
health of the rising generation.
But however beneficent may be the influence of the elementary school, it
comes to an end abruptly at the age of fourteen, and often a year or two
earlier. Up to the age of leaving school, the boy is carefully guarded by
the State, and then, with no transitional stage, he becomes a man, and, so
far as the State is concerned, all control is withdrawn. Two or three per
cent., with the help of scholarships, may pass annually to the secondary
school, where State supervision is continued. Not more than 30 per cent.
of those who leave the elementary school attend an evening school,[93] and
even if they do there is no medical inspection in such places, and little
effective discipline is possible for boys attending evening school on two
or three nights a week. The remaining two-thirds disappear from the sight
of the State, which henceforth renounces all responsibility for their
supervision.
We have next to regard the schools as training-grounds for the workmen of
the future. We ought not to look to the elementary schools to provide any
definite preparation for a trade. Unfortunately, through no fault of
their own, and because of the industrial development of the day, the
schools are turning out in thousands lads completely equipped for a
certain class of occupation. We have already seen that the most signal
triumph of the schools is to be found in the habits of regularity,
intelligence, and obedience, which they impress on the boys. Now, these
qualities are essential to success in all walks of life; but for one form
of employment alone are they all that is required. This form of employment
includes those occupations in which boys and boys only are engaged, and
where the boys are discharged as soon as they become men. The
messenger-boy, the shop-boy, the van-boy, and even the boy who attends to
some machine which monotonously performs a single operation—the boy who
comes into one of these classes need take with him nothing but the three
recommendations of regularity, obedience, and intelligence. We shall trace
later the disastrous effects of these forms of employment. It is not
without significance that the rapid increase in the number of boys so
engaged has synchronized with the rapid improvement in the system of
elementary education. It is something of a tragedy that the most signal
triumph of the schools should be, perhaps, the cause of their most signal
failure.
Definite training must be looked for in the continuation school. It is
unnecessary to add much to what has been said in the last chapter; the
State offers opportunity, but with its existing powers can do little more.
Speaking generally, for the child of comparatively well-to-do parents,
for the clever child, for the child of unusual energy and physical vigour,
these opportunities can be enjoyed; but for the remainder—and that the
great majority—they are useless, because beyond the reach of ordinary
endeavour.
Of State enterprise in the provision of an opening it is too early to
speak; the juvenile branch of the Labour Exchange is only creeping into
existence. In the next chapter an attempt will be made to explain how best
can be realized the possibilities which lie latent in these institutions.
§ 3. SUMMARY.
We are now in a position to summarize the achievements and the defects of
the contribution of the State towards the creation of a true
apprenticeship system. Its machinery of regulation has removed the worst
abuses of child labour, and in certain departments of industry protects,
with some degree of success, the health of the young persons engaged. Its
enterprise in the field of education is providing supervision over the
health and conduct of the boy till he reaches the age of fourteen, while
for the young person it offers opportunities of longer supervision and
technical training.
If much has been done, much more remains undone. Regulation still leaves
rampant many of the evils of child labour. Some two-thirds of the boys as
they leave school enter occupations where regulation hardly exists. State
enterprise for all practical purposes exerts no supervision over lads
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen—the most important epoch of
their lives. Technical training, and even the continuance of general
education, are possible only for a favoured few, and for the present there
is no State provision of an opening.
These are grave defects, and apprenticeship of to-day stands condemned
unless it can be shown that one or other of the remaining factors supply
what the State has failed to give.
II.
The Contribution of Philanthropy.
The second of the general forces, as distinguished from the individual and
special influences of the home and the workshop, which may make some
contribution towards the apprenticeship of to-day must be sought among the
varied religious and philanthropic associations. While we could not expect
from these bodies any assistance in the work of technical training, we
might hope to find in their midst conditions which make for the better
supervision and control of the lads who have left school.
Beginning with the more distinctly religious associations, we find among
them practical unanimity of opinion. One and all confess sadly that they
are unable to keep in touch with the boys after they have gone out to
work. For the tens of thousands of schoolboys who attend Sunday-school
there are only hundreds of lads on the roll of Bible-classes. The sudden
change from the status of schoolboy to the status of wage-earner, which
for the majority severed all connection with the education authority, has
even more decisively brought to an end the supervision of church and
chapel.
The miscellaneous associations represented by clubs, lads’ brigades, boy
scouts, and the like, have all been called into existence for the express
purpose of exerting some measure of control over that transition period of
life which separates the boy from the man. How many lads between the ages
of fourteen and eighteen come within the sphere of influence it is not
possible to say with any exactness. The Twentieth Century League estimated
in 1903 that in London about 27,780 boys were connected with institutions
of this character, and we shall see later that there are in London about
120,000 boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
It would be no less difficult to weigh the value of the work done.
Existing as they do on a voluntary basis, and free from all element of
compulsion, such supervision as they exert must take the form of tactful
guidance. Their success or failure depends less on the machinery and more
on the personal qualities of the manager. The wide and admirable influence
of the best clubs is the triumph, not of the system, but of the
exceptional individual. Exceptional individuals are, it must be
remembered, exceptional, and an organization which depends on their
presence is necessarily limited in the extent of its operations. We cannot
therefore look to these associations to meet adequately the call for
supervision.
Of recent years numerous associations have been formed with the object of
providing suitable openings for boys. There are two sides to their work.
On the one hand, situations are found, terms made with employers as to
wages and training, and steps taken to see that these terms are carried
out. On the other hand, periodic visits are paid to the boy in his home,
advice given as to attendance at evening schools, and friendly relations
established between boy and visitor. In general, these bodies are
concerned with placing out lads in skilled trades, though here and there
some attempts have been made to attack the better parts of the unskilled
labour market. Work of this character entails the expenditure of much time
and money, and requires for the negotiation with employers considerable
technical qualifications. Experience has shown that a staff of volunteers
cannot alone perform the necessary duties, and paid officers have been
appointed. The cost necessarily limits the expansion of the organization.
Out of the 30,000 boys who annually leave the elementary schools of
London, it is probable that not more than 2 per cent. come under the
influence of these associations. On the other hand, if the sphere of their
operations is limited, within that sphere it has achieved very
considerable success. They have been pioneers in a new movement, have
fully justified their existence, and must now look to the State to
continue on a larger scale, but on the same general lines, the work that
they have begun. Unlike most volunteers, these employment committees
welcome this transfer, and are now readily placing their services at the
disposal of the Board of Trade through its juvenile Labour Exchange.
This brief survey of the contribution of philanthropic enterprise to the
apprenticeship of to-day reveals one obvious conclusion: the associations
only touch a fringe of the problem, and in no way exert any comprehensive
measure of control over the lads between the ages of fourteen and
eighteen. Their number, their variety, and their enthusiasm, indicate the
urgent need of supervision rather than supervision successfully achieved.
We cannot look to them to supplement in any large degree the defects in
the scheme of State guardianship, or the more grave defects which will
appear when the conditions of home and workshop have been passed in
review.
III.
The Contribution of the Home.
What contribution does the home make to the solution of the apprenticeship
question? We cannot, indeed, expect to find within the walls of the home
provision made for the general education of the boy, or the specialized
training of the youth; but it is not unnatural to look to the parent to
exercise supervision over his children till manhood is reached, and
likewise to offer to the boy leaving school advice and material assistance
in the selection of a trade. We are still inclined to regard the family as
the one relic of the patriarchal system that has retained a vigorous
vitality through all the ages; we are still apt to see in the home a
small world, edged off from the large world outside, self-centred,
self-ruled, and enjoying all the advantages of a benevolent despotism.
To what extent is this general assumption justified by the results of
actual experience? The question is of profound importance, and has not
received the attention it deserves from those who have written on boy
labour. If we can take it for granted that in the normal home we have the
means of controlling the boy and the growing lad up till the age of
eighteen, we have a solid foundation on which to rest the new
apprenticeship. Abnormal homes may need attention; but if the problem of
supervision is solved for the majority, if there is an authority to which
the boy submits himself as a matter of course, to add training and to
organize openings are tasks which should present no serious difficulty.
Can we look to the home to provide this fundamental basis of a true
apprenticeship system? To answer this question we must study the homes
themselves. A few years ago I devoted a large amount of time to the
collection of material touching the character of family life in towns. The
results were published in an essay entitled “The Boy and the Family.”[94]
I may perhaps be allowed to summarize the conclusions there established.
Home varies from home; each may be said to have its own individuality, but
each has much in common. To give definiteness to the problem, I
endeavoured to class the homes under three types. In the main, type
number one referred to the inhabitants of one and two room tenements; type
number two embraced the families possessing three rooms; while the third
type included those persons fortunate enough to rent more than three
rooms. The size of the home proved a rough, though the best attainable,
method of classifying the characteristics of the inmates.
Supervision has been interpreted to mean two things—supervision of health
and supervision of conduct.
So far as the supervision of health is concerned, it is probable that very
few of the parents belonging to the three types possess the necessary
knowledge to carry out this duty. Among all classes of the community
ignorance on matters affecting the hygiene of the home is almost
universal. But even if knowledge were present, the resources at the
disposal of large numbers would prove inadequate to make that knowledge
effective. With type number one overcrowding is the rule; with type number
two it is common; and only in the third type do we reach conditions of
housing favourable to health.
The experience derived from medical inspection of school-children and the
administration of the Provision of Meals Act has revealed the deplorable
condition of large numbers of children when left to the unaided care of
their parents. The returns of necessitous children fed, which are
published weekly in the minutes of the London County Council, showed that
during the winter of 1909-10 at the time of most acute distress, about 9
per cent. of the children in the schools were receiving meals. A careful
inquiry, the most elaborate of its kind, made into the home circumstances
of the necessitous children in certain schools showed that the number of
children actually fed was probably below, and certainly not above, the
number who required meals. The same inquiry, with its lurid pictures of
squalor and distress, proved how small was the prospect of health for many
of those children, even though they were fed at school. It may be regarded
as a conclusive demonstration of the call for more searching regulation on
the part of the State.[95] It is probable, however, that the need for food
is far larger than that represented by the number of children actually
fed. Several inquiries, such as those carried out by Mr. Charles Booth in
London, and Mr. Rowntree in York, indicate that the effective income of
nearly a third of the population is too small to supply in adequate
quantity even the bare necessities of existence.
Medical inspection is now revealing the number of children suffering from
definite ailments, and urgently requiring medical treatment, which they
have hitherto been unable, in a large proportion of cases, to obtain. It
would appear that some 10 per cent. suffer from defective vision, about 1
per cent. from discharging ears, about the same number from ringworm,
while at least a third are suffering in health from the result of
decaying teeth.[96]
Everywhere we have abundant evidence to show that, from want of
supervision, or of the effective means of supervision in the home, large
numbers of children are growing up ill-clad, ill-nourished, and suffering
from definite diseases, all alike leading to inefficient manhood.
The second department of supervision is concerned with the supervision of
character. Can we rest satisfied that the parents exercise over the
growing lads that salutary control all growing lads require? The question
is of profound importance, if, as all agree, character is the condition of
success when the first steps are taken in the industrial world. It is
necessary to distinguish between the boy attending school and the boy
exempt from compulsory attendance. In what follows I shall draw largely on
my essay in “Studies of Boy Life.” The conclusions are derived from the
experience of many years’ residence in a poor part of London, and have
been tested by a careful inquiry among ministers of religion,
school-teachers, rent-collectors, and others with special knowledge of the
subject.
§ 1. THE BOY OF SCHOOL AGE.
If the parents are to control the boys, the boys must come much under the
personal influence of the parents; in other words, rulers and ruled must
meet frequently. Now, in all three types of family the father exercises
little direct control over the children. If of good character, he is
either out at work or out looking for work during five days of the week,
and sees the children only in the evening. On Saturday afternoons and on
Sundays he is at home; but a week-end visitor cannot be the dominant
factor in domestic affairs. If control is exercised, it must be exercised
by the mother. To trace her influence, it is necessary to picture the kind
of life led by each type. I quote from my essay:
“So far as the first type is considered, it is not easy to say when the
children and parents meet.... The general order of events is something as
follows: If it is one of the days on which he elects to work, the father
rises about five o’clock, finds his own breakfast, and then quits the
house. Some two or three hours later the school-children get out of bed,
wash their faces, take a slice of bread and dripping, and go out.
Sometimes the mother rises at that time and gets the breakfast, but in
most cases remains in bed. At nine the boys go to school. At noon school
is over, and the boys, after amusing themselves in the playground or
street for an hour, go home to get some food. The mother meanwhile has
risen, dressed the smaller children, performed the irreducible minimum of
domestic work, and then left the house to gossip with a neighbour, or earn
a few pence by charing. On rare occasions she may cook the children some
dinner, but as a rule they get what food they can find, and eat it in the
streets. Sometimes they receive a halfpenny to buy their own meal at a
fried-fish shop. The boys then return to school, escape at half-past four,
possibly go home to tea, and then once more turn for amusement to the
streets. There they remain until it is dark, and often in summer till dawn
begins to break, when at length they seek their dwelling and go to bed. In
many cases the boys do not find their way back to their own houses, but
take up their quarters for the night in the house of some friend.
Sometimes they do not sleep in a house at all. In one case of which I have
heard three boys spent a fortnight in a wash-house on the top of some
blocks. There they lived an independent existence, getting their food and
attending school regularly all the while. Later on, being discovered by a
policeman, they were sent to their respective families.... Week follows
week with little variation to mark the march of time. As brief a fragment
of the boy’s life as is possible is spent within the common dwelling,
which offers him no occupation, and is entirely devoid of interest or
attraction. The mother does not demand his presence indoors, while he
himself has no wish to be there. The street, and not the house, ought
probably to be regarded as the home or meeting-place of the family.”[97]
Supervision under circumstances of this kind must be an almost negligible
factor in the life of the home. Let us now come to the second type. I
quote again:
“In the second type, as already mentioned, the family usually occupies
three rooms. At first sight the conditions found in the former type seem
to prevail here also. Indeed, as a matter of fact, the boys spend hardly
more time at home than those just considered. Out of school hours they are
either in the street or employed in some form of paid work.... School,
street, meals, and bed alternate with one another here in much the same
way as they did in the first type. But while the facts remain for the most
part unchanged, their setting and colouring are very different. Another
atmosphere seems to pervade the whole life; some sense of order and
regularity begins to manifest itself; meals are at fixed hours; and the
boys are expected home and sent to bed at more or less definite times.
They return to their own tenements, and do not spend the night with some
of their neighbours. As will appear later, home interests begin to
develop; and if the boys spend their leisure in the streets, this is due
more to their own choice than to the wish of their parents.... The mother
does not display the utter indifference to the state of the dwelling or
the habits of the children conspicuous in the first type. Some sort of
ideal of home she seems to possess, but to obtain this ideal is beyond her
power. She has the look of one who feels that things are wrong, and yet
can see no remedy. She notes, for example, the evil influence the street
exerts on the characters of her boys, but does not know how to preserve
them from its overwhelming attractions.”[98]
“The chief difference, then, between the first and second type lies not so
much in a different kind of life as in a certain change of atmosphere that
pervades and transforms the common existence. In the third type this
change of atmosphere becomes more conspicuous. A great part of the boy’s
time is, indeed, still spent outside the dwelling-place, but the life at
home begins to assume larger proportions. There is more order and quiet in
the house—a condition which reacts favourably on the boys. They are no
longer seen hanging about the streets, loafing at the corners, or shouting
noisily in the gutters. Though much out of doors, they go farther afield,
and visit parks or museums; while, if they stay near home, they will
usually be discovered in the school playground. In the evening many of
them are indoors, and have various occupations, of which, perhaps, reading
is the chief.”[99]
In type number one, then, there is, for all practical purposes, a complete
absence of supervision. In the second type there is a desire for
supervision, but the narrowness of the house accommodation thrusts the
boys into the streets. In the third type alone are the conditions
favourable to supervision.
§ 2. THE BOY AFTER SCHOOL DAYS.
If the boy while at school is under little parental control, it is not to
be expected that this control will be tightened when school days are over.
With the first type of family there was no supervision before, and there
is no more afterwards. The boy is self-supporting, and troubles little
about the home, and the home troubles little about him. There is a partial
exception in the case of the coster. Here the boy may become one of the
regular working members of the establishment, and remains with his father;
but the discipline is of a rude and ready sort.
With the second type of family the boy’s earnings are of great importance
to the family, and the mother does her best to keep him at home. Any
exercise of discipline is avoided, lest the lad should take his earnings
and go elsewhere. He is rather in the position of a favoured lodger, whose
presence is valuable to the home, and who must be treated well for fear he
should give notice.
In the third type of family, the boy, with growing years, passes out of
the control of the mother, and is resentful of any restraint exerted by a
woman. What supervision he enjoys comes from the father. The two do not
meet often; father and son are seldom employed together, and the long
distance that frequently separates home and work places the boy beyond the
reach of parental control during the greater portion of the week.
Such in broad outline, rendered jagged, no doubt, by numerous exceptions,
is the quantity and the quality of the supervision exercised by the town
parent over the town boy. Even with the highest type no high standard is
reached, while with the lower we cannot contemplate the picture with any
degree of satisfaction. Speaking generally, the city-bred youth is
growing up in a state of unrestrained liberty; and what makes the problem
more serious is the fact that all evidence goes to show that this
disquieting phenomenon is not an accident, but the direct product of the
social and industrial conditions of the times. Towns are growing larger,
and with the growth of towns the whole conditions of family life are being
transformed. The old patriarchal system is gone; the father is no longer
an autocratic ruler in his small world. The family, so to say, has become
democratized; we have in it an association of equals in authority. Now,
the most ardent advocates of the extension of the suffrage have always
limited their demands to an appeal for adult suffrage; they have never
clamoured for children to be given a vote. Yet this, for all effective
purposes, is what happens in the home in the case of the boy as soon as he
has left school. The status of wage-earner has brought with it the status
of manhood, and his earnings have conferred on him immunity from control
and the right to be consulted in the politics of the home. Another fact,
not sufficiently recognized, tends to break down the patriarchal system.
With the steady improvement in the State schools, the boy is usually
better educated than the father; the father knows this, and the boy knows
it too.
It is idle, therefore, to look for any large amount of parental control
over the boy who has left school. We must face realities, however
unpleasant these realities may happen to be; and one of the realities of
the time is the independence of the lad. What is equally significant is
the suddenness with which this independence comes. Until the age of
fourteen he has remained under a carefully designed system of State
supervision, exerted by the school authorities; while in a large number of
cases the discipline of the home has been an important factor in his
existence. At the age of fourteen, as a general rule, the control of
school and home end together. The lad goes to bed a boy; he wakes as a
man. There should therefore be little cause for surprise if the habits of
the school and home are rapidly sloughed off in the new life of
irresponsible freedom.
Whether, therefore, we look to the State, to philanthropic enterprise, or
to the home, we find no satisfactory guarantee for the supervision of the
youth of the country. We have yet to search for this supervision in the
workshop; but if it is absent there, we shall be faced with the
disquieting phenomenon of the boy at the age of fourteen enjoying the full
and complete independence of the adult.
IV.
The Contribution of the Workshop.
Having examined three out of the four factors which contribute to the
apprenticeship of to-day, and found them all inadequate, we must now turn
to the workshop in the hope that we shall discover there conditions more
favourable to the well-being of the youth of the country. If, however,
this last factor prove defective, the apprenticeship of to-day will stand
condemned, and the case for drastic reform will become unanswerable. It
will therefore be desirable to devote considerable space to this, the
central feature of the problem of boy labour.
In what follows it is proposed first to make a detailed study of
conditions in London, and then to present a general picture of the state
of boy labour in other parts of the country. London has been selected for
a detailed study because in a peculiar degree it represents the extreme
type of urbanization. There is also the advantage that in the case of
London the material required for the examination has to a large extent
been collected. The investigations of Mr. Charles Booth, the publications
and inquiries on the subject carried out by the London County Council, Mr.
Cyril Jackson’s report on boy labour presented to the Poor Law Commission,
and numerous other writings, have provided for the study of London a mass
of information which, though not in all respects exhaustive, is more
complete than can be found elsewhere.
§ 1. LONDON.
A study of the problem of boy labour in London involves the study of three
questions. First we have to consider the case of the children who, while
still attending school, are employed for wages. Next we must devote
special attention to the boys as they leave school and distribute
themselves among the different occupations. Finally, we must watch the
later career of those lads, and in particular endeavour to ascertain in
what way and with what results is made the difficult passage from the
status of the youth to the status of the man.
(a) The Employment of School-Children.
In London the half-time system is not permitted. The standard of
attainment for total exemption has been made sufficiently high to prevent
the great majority of boys from leaving school till the age of fourteen is
reached. It is, however, a fact that improved methods of instruction and
more rapid promotion from class to class are tending to lower the age at
which it is possible to obtain a Labour Certificate. How far this
opportunity is used it is not easy to say; but in certain schools,
situated in the poorer districts, it is alleged that there is a growing
tendency for the brighter children to claim exemption in this way. The
regularity of attendance is admirable, the average attendance in boys’
schools exceeding 90 per cent. We may therefore assume that, if the boys
work for wages, they must work at times when the schools are not opened.
To what extent are boys employed while still liable to attend school? In
1899 a return was obtained throughout the elementary schools of England
and Wales of the number of children so employed. In London, in the case of
boys, the figures were 21,755.[100] The tables also give the ages of the
children, but boys and girls are not separated. If, however, we assume
that the number of children of each sex at each age is proportionate to
the total number of children of each sex at all ages, we find that 78 per
cent. of the boys were eleven and upwards, and 22 per cent. under eleven.
The number of boys of eleven and upwards would be about 17,000. There are
in the elementary schools about 70,000 boys eleven years of age and
upwards, so that about 24 per cent. of these boys are employed. In other
words, nearly a quarter of the boys in the elementary schools above the
age of eleven were employed at the time of the return. The actual number
of boys who are employed during the course of their school career would be
considerably larger, as they would not all be employed at the same moment.
The return is more than ten years old, but, with the exception of the
children under eleven, it is improbable that there has been much change.
Similar figures may be deduced from the Report of the Interdepartmental
Committee on the Employment of School-Children, 1901.[101]
With regard to the number of hours worked, Miss Adler’s evidence is
selected, and typical schools show that 56 per cent. were employed for
more than twenty hours a week, while 14 per cent. were employed
thirty-five hours or upwards.[102] In individual cases the figures were
much higher. “Thus a boy of eleven years of age, for four shillings a
week, was employed for forty-three and three-quarter hours in carrying
parcels from a chemist’s shop, and, except on Sundays, was practically
every moment of his life at school or at work from seven in the morning
till nine o’clock at night. Another boy, aged thirteen, worked fifty-two
hours a week, being employed by a moulding company, and attending a
theatre for five evenings a week and for half a day on Wednesday for a
matinée—for the last, however, playing truant from school.”[103] The
following graphic account taken from a school composition, and obtained
under circumstances which guarantee its essential accuracy, shows the
amount of work which may be compressed into a single day. It refers to
Saturday:
“I first got up from bed about half-past six, and put my clothes on and
had a wash. Then I went to work at B.’s, and swept out his shop, and then
I did the window out. But after I done the window I had my breakfast and
went in the shop again. I started taking out orders that came in. While I
was taking the orders out, Mr. B. went to the Borough market for some
potatoes, cabbages, and some onions; but when he came home I had to unload
his van. After I unloaded his van, he went for some coal, which he sells
at one and sixpence a hundredweight, but he got two tons of coal in. Then
we had dinner about one o’clock. When we had our dinner, I had a rest till
about four o’clock, when I had tea. When I had my tea I had to go and chop
some wood, when it was time to shut up the shop. I had my supper and went
home, and went to bed, and the time was about twelve o’clock.”[104] It
will be seen that, with the exception of a break in the middle of the day,
the boy was on duty for nearly three-quarters of the twenty-four hours,
and for part of the time was engaged in heavy manual labour.
What effect does employment have on the physical condition of children
under the age of fourteen? “That excessive employment is injurious alike
to the education and to the health of the children is hardly in question.
It was testified to by witness after witness, many of them in no way
likely to be influenced by merely theoretical objections to child
labour.”[105] On the other hand, most of the witnesses that appeared
before the Interdepartmental Committee were of opinion that “moderate
work” was in many cases not only not injurious, but “positively
beneficial.”[106] It is not easy to understand what is meant by the last
statement. If some form of employment is beneficial, then the 76 per cent.
who are not so employed suffer, and steps should be taken to encourage
them to work. It is doubtful whether the witnesses would have accepted
this conclusion, from which, on their own assumptions, there is really no
escape. The difficulty lay in drawing the line. “Most of the witnesses
seemed to suggest that twenty hours might be fixed as the maximum weekly
limit; but, on the other hand, we found some cases where less than twenty
hours a week, if concentrated in one or two days, or if done at night,
must be injurious.”[107]
But the evidence of most value on the subject is to be found in a Report
of the Medical Officer of the London County Council.[108] About 400 boys
employed outside school hours were examined. The following table, with
defects in percentages, was obtained as the result:[109]
| Hours worked Weekly. |
Actual
Number
of Boys. |
Fatigue
Signs. |
Anæmia. |
Severe
Nerve
Signs. |
Deformities. |
Severe
Heart
Signs. |
All schoolboys of district
workers and non-workers |
3,700 |
— |
25 |
24 |
8 |
8 |
| Working 20 hours or less |
163 |
50 |
34 |
28 |
15 |
11 |
| Working 20 to 30 hours |
86 |
81 |
47 |
44 |
21 |
15 |
| Working over 30 hours |
95 |
83 |
45 |
50 |
22 |
21 |
It will be seen that the defects rise rapidly with increase in the hours
of work; while, even in the case of those working less than twenty hours,
there is a serious deviation from the average. The fact that 50 per cent.
of those working less than twenty hours should exhibit signs of fatigue,
even where no permanent physical evil results, must seriously affect the
value of the school instruction. In every case the workers compare
unfavourably with the average for the whole of the workers and
non-workers. We cannot view with satisfaction the truth that, even in
those employed with moderation, deformities and severe heart signs should
be nearly 50 per cent. above the average. The medical officer adds other
conclusions no less disquieting. “Working eight hours on Saturday is as
inimical as thirty hours during the week, and working through the
dinner-hour appears particularly productive of anæmia,”[110] “Retardation
in school work was noted in 209 out of these 330 boys, 86 being one
standard, 83 two standards, 37 three standards, and 3 four standards
behind that corresponding to their age.”[111] As his final conclusion the
medical officer states: “We must set up as an ideal the suppression of
child labour below twelve years of age, and during school life regulate it
to twenty hours weekly, and a maximum of five hours on any one day.”[112]
The figures, however, would seem to go far in justifying the more drastic
remedy of complete prohibition.
It is, however, fair to mention that the Report of the Interdepartmental
Committee, and also the Report of the Medical Officer, refer to a state of
affairs prior to the passing of the Employment of Children Act. Under this
Act, as explained in the last chapter,[113] employment of children under
the age of eleven is forbidden, while the by-laws of the Council place
restrictions on the number of hours children may work, and the times of
day during which such work may be carried on. It is too soon to judge of
the extent to which these restrictions can be enforced. During the first
year of effective operation in London there were, in respect of boys under
the age of sixteen, 13,461 cases of infringement. Prohibition under a
certain age or during certain times of the day is comparatively easy to
enforce; but limitation of hours, as experience of the Shop Act shows, is
extremely difficult to enforce, and peculiarly difficult where, as with
school-children, persons are not employed regularly, but work irregularly
at times when the schools are not open. To get evidence sufficient to
justify convictions is almost impossible, except in a few outrageous
cases.
What, if any, effect does the employment of school-children have on the
general question of the preparation for a trade? Into this general
question the Interdepartmental Committee did not enter. They did indeed
regard certain forms of occupation as injurious, while they pronounced as
beneficial employment in moderation. But this statement has apparently
reference only to matters of health, and not to the relation of employment
during school days to employment afterwards. The question is of great
importance, as habits, in respect of work for wages, formed by the boy
cling persistently to the youth. It is necessary, therefore, to pay some
attention to the characteristics of the work which schoolboys undertake.
In London 90 per cent. of the work would be included in the three
following classes: (1) Shops—errand-running and delivery of parcels,
milk, newspapers, and watching the goods spread on the counters outside
the shops; (2) domestic—knife and boot cleaning, and occasionally
baby-minding; and (3) street employment—hawking of newspapers, matches,
and flowers, organ-grinding, and the like. Now, none of these forms of
occupation provide any trade-training, or offer an opening with
satisfactory prospects, to the boy as he leaves school. On the other hand,
this class of work has distinctly injurious effects. First, it is
employment of a casual character. Affected as it is, on the one hand, by
attendance at school, and on the other by Saturdays and holidays, it is
essentially irregular as regards hours. Secondly, it is easy to obtain,
and consequently lightly undertaken and lightly dropped. Where another
situation can be obtained at will, there is no demand on the worker to
display the qualities that make for permanence of employment. Thirdly, it
is work in which youths as well as boys are engaged; in other words, it
does provide an opening to the boy as he leaves school—an opening which
he is likely to accept, because it is the most obvious, but at the same
time an opening in one of those forms of occupation entrance into which we
should, as will appear later, do our utmost to discourage. It is
singularly unfortunate that a boy’s first association with any kind of
paid employment should be of this nature. And, finally, it is at least
open to grave doubt whether that sense of independence of home which comes
with the consciousness of earning wages should begin at as early an age
as twelve or thirteen.
It would not be easy to imagine a more unsatisfactory form of preparation
for a trade than that provided by the kind of work carried out by
wage-earning children. If we add to this demoralizing influence the
injurious effect on health and education, the case for total prohibition
of boy labour during school-days becomes very strong.
(b) The Entry to a Trade.
The great majority of boys remain at the elementary school till they
attain the age of fourteen; it is no less true that the vast majority
cease attendance as soon as that age is reached. The period of the next
four years—that is, from fourteen to eighteen—forms the most critical
time of their career. It is during these four years that the boy must, if
ever, have taken the first steps towards learning a trade. During this
interval his physical strength must mature, his character take on itself a
more or less permanent set, and the question whether his education shall
represent something more than a faint shadow of early impressions be
finally determined. In short, it is during these four years that the
future citizen is made or marred.
The previous survey, whether of the factors which contribute to the
apprenticeship of to-day, or of the evils which are found among
wage-earning school-children, does not guarantee a favourable start in the
world of whole-time employment. Each year about 30,000 boys leave school
at the age of fourteen to take up some form of work. These figures do not
agree with the Census returns, because the latter include all London boys
in all classes of society, whether at school or at work. Here we are
concerned only with the boys of fourteen who leave the elementary school
with the intention of earning their own living. Between the ages of
fourteen and eighteen there will therefore be 120,000 boys. It is the
careers of these 120,000 boys that we must now try to follow.
What are the first occupations selected by these 120,000 boys? During the
last few years the London County Council has endeavoured to find an answer
to this question. Each head-master of an elementary school is required
annually to fill up a form in respect of each boy who has left the school
during the preceding twelve months. The information asked for is
“occupation of parent,” “occupation of boy,” “whether skilled or
unskilled,” or “whether a place of higher education is attended.” Returns
have been received and summarized for the years 1906-07 and 1907-08. The
first return was incomplete, but the second included the vast majority of
those who left. Below is given the summary for the two years:
| |
Skilled. |
Unskilled. |
Higher
Education. |
| Number |
8,662 |
15,910 |
1,524 |
| Percentage |
33·2 |
61·0 |
5·8 |
| Percentage, 1906-07 |
28·5 |
67·9 |
3·6 |
It will be seen that, including those who went to some higher form of
education, little more than a third of the boys left school to enter a
skilled trade.[114]
Table I.
| Class of Occupation. |
Number. |
Percentage. |
| Parent. |
Boy. |
Parent. |
Boy. |
| Trades and industries |
615 |
347 |
40·87 |
18·74 |
| Domestic offices or services |
23 |
46 |
1·52 |
2·48 |
| Transport (including messengers, errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) |
191 |
829 |
12·69 |
44·76 |
| Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, and dealers |
137 |
133 |
9·10 |
7·18 |
| Commercial occupations |
61 |
141 |
4·05 |
7·61 |
| General labour |
436 |
215 |
28·98 |
11·61 |
| Professional occupations and their subordinate services |
11 |
5 |
0·73 |
0·27 |
| General or local government |
26 |
6 |
1·73 |
0·32 |
| Defence of the country |
5 |
1 |
0·33 |
0·06 |
| Higher education |
— |
27 |
— |
1·45 |
| Unemployed |
— |
102 |
— |
5·52 |
| Total |
1,505 |
1,852 |
100·00 |
100·00 |
It is unfortunate that no full analysis has been made of these returns.
The value of the information which would have thus been obtained was not
supposed to justify the labour and expenditure involved in such an
analysis. I have, however, roughly analyzed nearly 4,000 cases, and
endeavoured to classify the occupations, in accordance with the table
founded on the Census return which will be given later.[115] I selected
for this purpose typical districts in London. Table I. includes returns
from all the schools in the electoral areas of Bermondsey, North
Camberwell, and Walworth; it represents a typical miscellaneous
working-class district. Table II. includes the electoral areas of Dulwich
and Lewisham; it may be regarded as typical of suburban villadom so far as
its inhabitants send their children to the elementary schools. Table III.
includes the electoral areas of Whitechapel and St. George’s-in-the-East,
districts distinguished by the presence of a large number of small trades
and sweated industries. Table IV. includes the collective results of the
three preceding tables, and may be taken as fairly typical of London as a
whole. It was necessary to exclude the returns of a few schools as
incomplete, indefinite, or obviously inaccurate. Parent stands for
occupation of parent, boy for occupation of boy. The two do not quite
correspond, as in a certain number of instances the occupation of the
parent was unknown. I have included the telegraph-boys under “Transport,”
as for my purpose this classification was the more suitable.
Table II.
| Class of Occupation. |
Number. |
Percentage. |
| Parent. |
Boy. |
Parent. |
Boy. |
| Trades and industries |
347 |
151 |
35·57 |
14·86 |
| Domestic offices or services |
14 |
27 |
1·45 |
2·64 |
| Transport (including messengers, errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) |
70 |
350 |
7·24 |
34·31 |
| Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, and dealers |
100 |
126 |
10·34 |
12·35 |
| Commercial occupations |
180 |
157 |
18·61 |
15·38 |
| General labour |
144 |
54 |
14·89 |
5·29 |
| Professional occupations and their subordinate services |
47 |
2 |
4·86 |
0·19 |
| General or local government |
66 |
9 |
6·83 |
0·88 |
| Defence of the country |
2 |
5 |
0·21 |
0·48 |
| Higher education |
— |
76 |
— |
7·45 |
| Unemployed |
— |
63 |
— |
6·17 |
| Total |
967 |
1,020 |
100·00 |
100·00 |
Table III.
| Class of Occupation. |
Number. |
Percentage. |
| Parent. |
Boy. |
Parent. |
Boy. |
| Trades and industries |
349 |
305 |
51·09 |
41·84 |
| Domestic offices or services |
25 |
18 |
3·66 |
2·47 |
| Transport (including messengers, errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) |
72 |
189 |
10·54 |
25·93 |
| Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, and dealers |
91 |
48 |
13·33 |
6·58 |
| Commercial occupations |
11 |
39 |
1·61 |
5·35 |
| General labour |
116 |
63 |
16·99 |
8·64 |
| Professional occupations and their subordinate services |
10 |
3 |
1·46 |
0·41 |
| General or local government |
8 |
— |
1·17 |
— |
| Defence of the country |
1 |
— |
0·15 |
— |
| Higher education |
— |
7 |
— |
0·96 |
| Unemployed |
— |
57 |
— |
7·82 |
| Total |
683 |
729 |
100·00 |
100·00 |
Table IV.
| Class of Occupation. |
Number. |
Percentage. |
| Parent. |
Boy. |
Parent. |
Boy. |
| Trades and industries |
1,308 |
803 |
41·46 |
22·31 |
| Domestic offices or services |
62 |
91 |
1·97 |
2·53 |
| Transport (including messengers, errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) |
333 |
1,368 |
10·55 |
38·00 |
| Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, and dealers |
328 |
307 |
10·39 |
8·52 |
| Commercial occupations |
252 |
337 |
7·98 |
9·36 |
| General labour |
696 |
332 |
22·06 |
9·22 |
| Professional occupations and their subordinate services |
68 |
10 |
2·16 |
0·28 |
| General or local government |
100 |
15 |
3·17 |
0·41 |
| Defence of the country |
8 |
6 |
0·26 |
0·16 |
| Higher education |
— |
110 |
— |
3·05 |
| Unemployed |
— |
222 |
— |
6·16 |
| Total |
3,155 |
3,601 |
100·00 |
100·00 |
In the interpretation of these tables certain facts must be borne in mind.
None of the parents are returned as unemployed; this is because the trade
of the parent was asked for, and no account was taken as to whether he was
or was not employed. Secondly, the occupations are somewhat vaguely
described; this in particular is true of the term “labourer.” More exact
information would no doubt have removed the parent from the class “general
labour,” and placed him in the class “transport,” and occasionally in the
classes “domestic servant” or “shop-assistant.” Thirdly, the
messenger-boys are included partly under “transport” and partly under
“shop-assistants,” the boy being termed sometimes an errand-boy and
sometimes a shop-boy. The term “office-boy,” which appears frequently in
the returns, is vague. I have classed the office-boy as an errand-boy
unless the school return places him in the column “skilled employment,”
when I have included him under the heading “commercial occupation.”
Making allowance for a certain inevitable inaccuracy which belongs to
returns of this kind, we have a general picture, accurate in all
essentials, of the distribution of boys among the various forms of
occupation immediately after leaving the elementary school. The columns
which refer to the trade of the parents, and indicate therefore the
distribution of the parents among the various forms of occupation, are of
considerable value. If we take Table IV., which may be regarded as typical
of London as a whole, and compare the last two columns, we shall at once
notice the striking difference that marks the distribution of boys and of
adults among the several kinds of employment. In “trades and industries,”
41 per cent. of parents are engaged, and only 22 per cent. of boys; 38 per
cent. of the boys are engaged in “transport,” and only 10 per cent. of
parents. This fact carries with it a conclusion of great importance—son
and father can seldom work together. If, for example, 10 per cent. of the
parents are included under “transport,” and 38 per cent. of the boys, it
is clear that little more than a quarter of such boys can be employed in
company with their parents. The actual facts, as revealed by an
examination of the individual returns, are much stronger, and demonstrate
the extreme rareness of father and son following the same occupation. In
the case of “trades and industries” the trade of father and son is not
infrequently the same; this is in particular true of “tailoring” trades of
the East End, included in Table III., where the proportion of adults to
boys are as fifty-one to forty-two. In suburban villadom, pictured in
Table III., the clerk is often father to the clerk, while the son of a
shopkeeper occasionally assists his parents in the shop. The coster habit
likewise runs in families. But with these exceptions father and son do not
work together. In consequence, in his first situation the boy is cut
adrift from the home and its control, such as it is. He has not his father
by his side to note and guide his conduct; and if he enters a skilled
trade, he lacks the personal interest of the parent to guarantee his
satisfactory training. We have already seen that the school supervision is
at an end; in consequence, the only disciplinary influence left is the
influence of the employer. The character of the employment and the nature
of the supervision of the master become, therefore, of supreme importance
to the well-being of the boy. It is consequently necessary to examine in
some detail the distinguishing features of the various kinds of
occupation. They are usually roughly classed as skilled or unskilled,
according as they do or do not lead to a form of employment which requires
specialized skill or specialized intelligence.
The Unskilled Trades.—Practically the whole of the unskilled trades are
included under the terms “domestic service,” “transport,” “shop,” and
“general labour,” and the great majority of the boys who select these
occupations may be said to select an unskilled trade. In Table I., a
typical working-class district, it will be seen that 66 per cent. of the
boys who leave the elementary schools come within this class. In Table
II., a suburban area, the figures are 55 per cent.; but a considerable
proportion of those included under “shops” appear to be employed in the
shops of their parents, and to be learning the business. In Table III.,
representing the small East End trades, the figures are 44 per cent.; but,
judged by wages and conditions of employment, the majority of the 42 per
cent. included under trades should be transferred to the class of
unskilled work. For all the districts, as a whole typical of London, Table
IV. shows the figures to be 58·27 per cent. The figures quoted above
ignore the boys returned as unemployed and unknown, the number of these
for all London being 6 per cent. They are boys waiting for something to
turn up; what will turn up it is impossible to predict. But it is safe to
say that a considerable portion will drift into unskilled work.
The unskilled trades fall into three classes. The first and smallest is
included under “domestic service.” Under this head are found boys in
barbers’ shops, page-boys, club-boys, boot and knife boys. Employment in a
barber’s shop is notoriously unhealthy;[116] a barber’s shop is also
supposed to be not infrequently the resort of the betting fraternity. The
fortunes of the page and club boy await the zeal of an investigator; the
knife and boot boy soon passes to some other occupation. Of the three
classes, domestic service is the least important and the soonest left by
the boy.
The second class, included under “transport” and “shopkeepers,” is far the
largest and the most important. In all London some 47 per cent. of the
boys are found here; or, if we add a half of the 6 per cent. returned as
unemployed, we may say that half the boys who leave the elementary schools
belong to this class. It is necessary to take “transport” and
“shopkeepers” together, because it is impossible to tell whether a
“shop-boy” is merely an errand-boy, or a boy on the road to become a
properly trained shop-assistant. It is probable, however, that only a
small number could be regarded as future shop-assistants.
Ignoring these exceptions, we have to follow the fortunes of 50 per cent.
of the boys leaving school—in other words, of 15,000 persons. Their forms
of employment have much in common. In the first place, they are what is
known as “blind-alley” occupations—they lead nowhere. Boys only are
engaged, and when the boys become men they are cast adrift. Sometimes they
are absorbed in the adult service, but more usually, if they have not
already left, are given notice, and must at the age of eighteen seek out
some new way of earning a living. The report of Mr. Cyril Jackson makes
this fact abundantly clear.[117] “The industrial biographies received,” he
says, “show clearly that there is generally a time of transition when boys
have to seek new occupations, for which they have little aptitude.”[118]
Or again: “There appears to be no doubt that the restlessness of many of
the boys doing more or less unskilled work obscures from some employers
the fact that they are using a greater number of boys than can ever be
employed in connection with their trade as men. The employers who have
filled up forms often state that they ‘never discharge a boy who is
willing to stay,’ or ‘that boys are only discharged for misconduct,’ when
it is evident from the figures appearing in the same form that there must
be a considerable proportion of the boys passing out of the trade each
year.... That many employers, on the other hand, do in fact discharge a
considerable proportion of their boys because they have no room for them
as men—or, to express the same thing in the form in which it presents
itself to the masters, because they cannot afford to offer men’s wages—is
shown in the short accounts of the trades in the Appendix.”[119] It is
needless to labour the point further, as everyone familiar with the
conditions of boy work give evidence to the same effect.
The second characteristic of these trades is that they are mainly
concerned with fetching or carrying something—messages, letters, parcels.
It is characteristic of that stage of civilization at which we have
arrived that we want to save ourselves trouble, or to save ourselves time.
Boys are the instruments we use. “Here we are, all of us,” says a modern
writer, “demanding an endless number of tiny jobs to be done on our
behalf. Every year multiplies these demands, increasing the pace at which
the jobs can be done, and the number of them that can be crowded into the
time. We learn to expect more and more conveniences at our elbow by which
communication can be made, business transacted, messages despatched,
parcels transferred, news brought up to date, transit hastened, things of
all kinds put under our hand. We touch buttons, press knobs, ring bells,
whisper down telephones, keep wires throbbing with our desires, bustle and
hustle the world along. And all this in the end means boys. Boys are
what we set moving. Boys are the material in which we deal. Boys are our
tools. Every wire has a boy at the end of it.”[120]
This tendency to demand the services of boys has spread through all
classes of society. To take a single example of quite recent growth: It is
becoming less and less common for the housewife to bring the results of
her marketing home herself; a boy delivers the goods instead. Go into any
shop, even in the poorest part of the town, and make a few purchases; the
shopman will probably offer to send them home for you. There is something
flattering and pleasant in the offer; it is one of the new products of
competition to multiply conveniences instead of cutting prices. The demand
for boys is rapidly increasing; and while the demand is increasing, the
supply of boys has diminished. The raising of the school age, the improved
attendance, and the decrease of truancy, have all removed from the labour
market an immense number of boys. “The Census figures show that there has
been a steady diminution of boys employed under fifteen during the last
quarter of a century.”[121] The Labour Exchanges testify to the same
effect, the managers frequently saying: “There is an unsatisfied demand
for juvenile labour of an unskilled type.”[122] This growing demand has
two effects. First, as it becomes increasingly easier for boys to obtain
situations, there is less and less inducement for them to show such
industry and good conduct as are necessary to retain their places.
Dismissal has no terrors; it means, if they please, a few days’ holiday,
or, if they prefer it, a new employer can be at once discovered. It
becomes therefore difficult for an employer to exercise over the boys the
discipline they need; if he attempt to do so, he will soon find himself
without boys. Lads change situations for the mere sake of change, to see
what happens. “I have known,” says Mr. J. G. Cloete, “boys who, within
three years of leaving school, have been employed in as many as seventeen
different occupations.”[123] The second consequence of the increased
demand for boys in these kinds of occupations is a rise in wages. The
earnings of these boys are considerably higher than those obtained by a
boy who enters a skilled trade. “The casual and low-skilled employments
give higher wages in the early years in order to attract the boys.”[124]
With boys choosing, as they do, their own occupations, high wages at the
outset are more attractive than low wages with the prospect of learning a
trade.
The third characteristic these occupations have in common lies in certain
general conditions of employment. Hours are long; at the same time, the
boy is often idle for long periods, waiting for messages to come in and
parcels to go out. Shop-boys and telegraph-boys are kept hanging about
with nothing to do. The office-boy in a small office is often the whole
staff, and is left alone for hours when his master is out, and “spends his
time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or
in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature.”[125] The boy has often heavy
goods to carry long distances, and overtaxes his strength. Either there
is too much idleness or too much work; these are the alternatives. In
neither case is there the possibility of much supervision.
The fourth characteristic has not received the attention it deserves.
These forms of occupation, though unskilled in the sense that the boy
receives no training in his present place of business, nevertheless demand
qualities of a high standard. The boy must be regular, obedient, and,
above all, intelligent. A dull boy as a messenger is liable to make stupid
and irritating mistakes. The stories of district messengers carrying
letters unaided over the Continent show that the boys possess no ordinary
intelligence. Now, we have already seen that these are the qualities which
are in a peculiar degree the product of the elementary schools. The
schools turn out innumerable boys of this kind. It is not, perhaps, a mere
coincidence that the increasing use of boys in occupations which call for
alertness of mind has gone on side by side with improvements in the
educational system. The State has spent much money on these boys. A boy
who starts to attend school at the age of three and leaves at fourteen has
had spent on him a sum of money which, if invested year by year at 4 per
cent., and left to accumulate till the time for leaving school comes,
would amount to nearly £100. Each year in the 30,000 boys who leave school
£3,000,000 of State-created value is turned adrift. The State has
therefore a right to demand that this capital sum of £100 invested in the
boy shall not be squandered by the employer. He ought to give back at the
age of eighteen at least as valuable an article as he received four years
earlier.
This consideration leads to the last characteristic distinguishing these
occupations. They lead to nothing, and when the boy reaches the end, he
is, in the majority of cases, distinctly inferior in every way to what he
was three or four years before. Evidence in favour of this assertion is
overwhelming. “At the present time, at the age of eighteen, after a four
years’ course of employment, whose chief characteristics are the long
hours, the lack of supervision, and the total absence of any educational
influence, the lad is a distinctly less valuable article in the labour
market than he was when he left school four years previously. His only
asset is represented by greater physical strength, accompanied probably by
a marked decrease in general health and vigour. He has lost the
intelligence and aptitude of the boy, and remains a clumsy and
unintelligent man, fitted for nothing but unskilled labour, and likely to
become sooner or later one of the unemployed.”[126] “There seems little
doubt that the boy labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that
they are left less capable members of the community, with little prospect
of good work when they become adults.”[127] “The most hopeless position is
that of the errand-boy at a small shop in a poor neighbourhood; his
prospects are absolutely nil.”[128] “The chart prepared from the forms
filled in by boys who entered life as errand-boys shows that the small
proportion who find steady and skilled employment afterwards have ceased
to be errand-boys very early; the vast majority become workers in
low-skill trades, or general and casual labourers.”[129] “Mr. Courtney
Terell, who has been making inquiries from the Passmore Edwards
Settlement, writes: ‘I feel confident ... that the messenger work produced
a definite effect on the boys, as will the continual performance of any
one of a definite function which admits of no improvement, and that this
has unfitted them for other work.’”[130] “The injury done to these boys is
not that they are compelled as men to devote themselves to low-skilled
labour, but that from the more or less specialized nature of the work
which has employed this boyhood, they are unfitted to become good
low-skilled labourers.”[131]
It is impossible to resist the mass of evidence of this kind which might
easily be increased indefinitely. The boy gains nothing from this form of
employment and loses much. He loses the results of his training in the
elementary school; the habits of obedience, regularity, and industry are
dead; the bright intelligence is dulled, and with the coming of dulness
goes the power of learning. He loses his prospects; his future is the
future of the unskilled labourer—the unskilled labourer, robbed of that
grit and alertness which alone secure for unskilled labour the adequate
reward of permanent employment at a steady wage. His loss is the loss of
the community, which is compelled later to relieve him and his family, and
perhaps in the end find a home for him in the workhouse. And in thinking
of this deterioration, and of that hopeless future which that
deterioration involves, we must never forget that it is not a mere handful
of lads who suffer in this way, but that half the boys who leave the
elementary school start on this dreary journey, and, so starting, bid fare
to reach that dreary end.
Reckoned in money, the State has spent a million and a half on these boys,
and but little comes back to the State or remains with the boy. If it has
gone anywhere, and it probably has, then it has gone into the pockets of
the employers who have sucked out of the boys their value, and then cast
them aside as worthless refuse, a sort of slag or waste product of their
works, for which neither they nor anyone else can find a use. In saying
this there is no desire to censure unfairly the employers. They are
undoubtedly to blame, because thoughtlessness and ignorance in persons of
their position are always blameworthy; but there is nothing deliberate in
their actions, and they are largely unconscious of the harm they are
doing. There is no active cruelty, and often much rude and ready kindness.
The boys to them are merely instruments in the machinery of their
business, for the moment the cheapest instruments that can be found, to be
used until a new and better supply takes the place of those who are used
up. They are ignorant of the consequences of their conduct, and, as their
evidence shows, generally imagine that the boys who leave find suitable
jobs. It is only of late years that numerous investigators and managers of
boys’ clubs have revealed the grave results of this thoughtlessness.
Employers who generally enjoy a good reputation as employers are often the
worst offenders. Indeed, the most flagrant example of this exploitation of
boy labour is to be found in the Imperial Government and the Municipal
Service. Mr. Cyril Jackson has in his report devoted much space to the
telegraph-boys in the service of the Post Office. “The boys come from very
good homes, and are often the pick of the family. They are examined
medically, and bring characters.”[132] A mere fraction are absorbed in the
adult service. “It appears as if the Post Office is one of the least
promising occupations into which a boy can enter. The better boys go into
it, and it is very depressing to see from our returns how very few of the
very large number discharged at sixteen or seventeen get into as good
employment as their good social standing and general standard of education
should have guaranteed for them.”[133] “Everyone of experience seems to
agree that these telegraph-messengers who are discharged exemplify in a
very striking way the evils of a parasitic trade.”[134] Yet these things
had been going on for years in a service like that of the Post Office,
which is subject to much criticism by its employees, and yet no attention
had been called to the evil. Unfortunately, boys have no votes, and do not
form trade unions. Other Government departments and the Municipal Service
seem no less ignorant and no less worthy of blame. A short time back the
Education Committee called the attention of the London County Council to
the misuse of its boy labour, and now the Council allows its boys, weekly,
six hours “off” during working hours, and provides classes which they are
compelled to attend. At the same time it has nominated one of its officers
to look after the interests of these boys, and to guide them into useful
occupations.
If the public service is thus guilty, we must not be surprised that
private employers are not conscious of wrongdoing in their use of boys.
The evil is now revealed; there can be no further excuse for ignorance.
How to deal adequately with the problem must be left to the consideration
of the next chapter.
The third division of the unskilled occupations comes under the head
“General Labour.” Some 9 per cent. of the boys as they leave school fall
into this class. This is a nondescript class not clearly defined in the
returns. Probably a considerable proportion should be brought into the
preceding class, but there are evidently a large number who could not be
disposed of in this way. Boys employed in warehouses, in gardens and
parks, boys in small places assisting the master in the lighter forms of
labour, boys accompanying their fathers and joining in his work—these
come into this division. The returns are not sufficiently explicit to
yield materials for a critical examination; but one or two conclusions can
be derived from their examination. It will be seen that 22 per cent. of
the parents, as compared with 9 per cent. of boys, are recorded as being
general labourers. There is here no excess of boys; there should not be
the same difficulty in boys finding openings in the adult service as in
those occupations where boys can claim a practical monopoly. Boys have
always taken some part in labouring work, and so passed to the better
class of unskilled labour. Boys in warehouses, for example, frequently
find there permanent situations. Further, the proportion of parents to
sons would indicate the possibility of the two being employed together,
and the boy thus remaining under the supervision of his father. An
examination of individual returns justifies this conclusion. On the other
hand, it is to be remembered that the hours of employment are frequently
very long, and the work arduous and ill suited to the strength of a
growing lad, and in no way regulated by legislation. Taken as a whole, it
is probable that the boys who enter this kind of occupation, though
without opportunity of continuing their education, are not in as forlorn a
condition as those in the previous class. But the whole question is
obscure, and it is difficult, without fuller information, to test the
nature of their training.
The Skilled Occupations.—The skilled occupations fall into two
classes—those where manual skill is required, and those concerned with
commercial and clerical operations. The former are included under “Trades
and Industries,” and the latter under “Commercial Occupations,”
“Professional Occupations,” and “Local Government.”
1. Trades and Industries.—From the tables printed on pp. 115-118, it
will be seen that under this heading there are in Table I., the type of a
working-class district, 41 per cent. of parents and 19 per cent. of boys;
in Table II., the type of a suburban district, the figures are 36 and 15
respectively; in Table III., the type of the small trader of the East End,
51 and 42; while in Table IV., the type of London as a whole, the
percentage is in the case of fathers 41, and in the case of boys 22. We
have now to consider the prospects as regards supervision, training and
opening which these trades offer to the boys who enter.
Table III., with its percentage of 51 parents and 42 boys engaged in
trades and industries, presents a pleasing appearance, but the bulk of the
trades concerned belong to the tailoring and other industries where
sweating is rife, where the skill required is of a low order, and the
wages small and often below the level of bare subsistence. The boys learn
something, are frequently employed with their fathers, and have a more or
less permanent outlook, though within the horizon of that outlook is
seldom included the vision of a living wage. They in general do not form
part of the class which finds its way into the ranks of that miscellaneous
unskilled labour whose chief characteristic is casual employment.
Ignoring this table, and taking the table for all London, we find again
the great disproportion of boys and parents. There are two ways in which
the boys may learn. They may become indentured apprentices, or, engaged
only by the week, though sometimes still termed apprentices, they may
enter the workshop, and take what chance is afforded them of “picking up”
the mysteries of the trade.
(a) Indentured Apprenticeship.—Apprenticeship is of little importance
in London; the system is rapidly becoming obsolete. Whether this is
desirable is a matter of opinion; that it is a fact cannot be gainsaid.
All evidence is unanimous in support of this conclusion. In 1906 a special
committee was appointed by the London County Council to make inquiries
into the question, and, after careful investigation, reported that “in
London the old system of indentured apprenticeship has for many years been
falling into decay. In the majority of the industries it has almost
entirely disappeared; in others it is occasionally found existing in a
haphazard and highly unsatisfactory manner; while in only a few trades can
it be said to be the commonly recognized way of entering the
profession.”[135] There are in London various charities, with an income of
about £24,000 a year, which, in accordance with the terms of their trusts,
might be used for purposes of apprenticeship; “but not more than a third
of the income has been devoted to this purpose.” “The fact that so small a
fraction of the income has been devoted to apprenticeship indicates that
the trustees have not found it an easy task to find candidates anxious to
be indentured to one of the skilled trades.”[136] “The recurring note,”
says Mr. Charles Booth, “throughout the whole of the industrial volumes of
the present inquiry is that the system of apprenticeship is either dead or
dying.”[137] The numerous letters to the Press, the wealth of speeches on
the matter, the sundry public meetings presided over by all manner of
persons, from the Lord Mayor downwards, all voice the same opinion. It is
needless to labour the question; we may take it as an accepted fact that
in London indentured apprenticeship is obsolescent, and the system itself
of negligible value as a factor in the training of youths in the process
of skilled trades.
(b) Picking up a Trade.—Here a boy enters a workshop, and takes his
chance of learning the trade from watching and assisting the men. The
employer is under no agreement to give him instruction—least of all, to
make an all-round craftsman of him. The boy rarely acquires more than a
certain dexterity in the performance of a single operation; and, however
proficient he may become in that operation, his general intelligence and
skill suffer from a narrow and exclusive specialization. The system and
consequences are dealt with at length in the Report of the London County
Council already mentioned. The importance of the problem must be the
justification for a long quotation:
“The high wages a lad can earn as an errand-boy ... are more attractive
than the low wages associated with an industrial training. Earning looms
larger in his imagination than the laborious and less remunerative
learning.... Even if, on leaving school, he obtains employment in a
workshop, his prospects may not be materially improved. As an errand-boy
running in and out of the workshop, if possessed of aptitude and
sharpness, he may in a haphazard fashion pick up a smattering of the
trade. If he is taken into the shop as a learner, he has little chance of
getting an all-round training. He is frequently out of work, and even when
employed seldom learns more than a single operation. The Advisory
Committee of the London County Council Shoreditch Technical Institute[138]
recently held an exhaustive inquiry on the subject, and some of the
conclusions are so germane to the present question that they merit
quotation. ‘It is thus possible,’ they write, ‘for a boy to be at one
branch of a trade for a few months only, and when bad trade intervenes he
is thrown out of employment, and frequently finds himself at twenty years
of age without a definite knowledge of any craft whatever, and he swells
the ranks of the unemployed. We have it on the authority of foremen,
employers, apprentices, and parents, that very little opportunity exists,
even in big houses, for a boy to learn his trade thoroughly; indeed, we
have had students who have been in a workshop as apprentices for three or
four years who could not make a small drawer, and in many cases who could
not square up true or make the usual joints; and in the woodworking trade
their knowledge of drawing when they come to us is practically nil. It
is a rare thing to find a young workman who can attack any branch of his
trade successfully. It frequently occurs that, in consequence of extensive
subdivision of labour and excessive competition, a man or boy is set to do
one thing—e.g., music-stools, overmantels, chair-legs, sideboards—all
the time. It is true the man or boy becomes skilled in one direction, but
correspondingly narrow in a true appreciation of his trade. It is also a
frequent occurrence that a master who has a job on hand which is slightly
out of the usual run finds it impossible to put it in the hands of his
usual staff. Moreover, when work of delicate design and construction has
to be made from specified drawings, it is extremely difficult to obtain
men who can proceed with the work on their own responsibility. Not only do
these remarks apply to the woodcrafts generally, but they apply with equal
force to such work as upholstery (both stuffing and drapery), to
metal-work, and to carving. In connection with the latter subject, it is a
rare thing indeed for carvers to design a carcass in the rough, and then
to see whether the proposed carved portion is in harmony with the
whole—whether the said carving be too much in relief, too flat, too
expansive, or altogether out of character with the general work. It is
notorious that good polishers and furniture decorators are exceedingly
rare, and many a high-class manufacturer has his goods spoiled on account
of bad polish and decorative treatment.’”[139] It must be remembered that
this last quoted opinion is not the opinion of the amateur, but the
informed opinion of representative employers.
The woodwork and furniture trades are not peculiar in the characteristic
of inadequate training. “We have reason to believe,” continues the Report,
“that if a similar inquiry were made into other trades, the same
unsatisfactory picture would be disclosed. Either the training is
one-sided, or there is no training at all. The consequences are
sufficiently obvious. The skilled trades are, we fear, recruited in the
main by immigrants outside London. In many trades the Londoner is at a
discount. Acquainted as he is with but one or two operations of his
industry, if he loses his situation, it is only with the greatest of
difficulty that he can find another. Mr. Charles Booth states that ‘with
carpenters and joiners, brick-layers, carriage builders, engineers,
smiths, and saddlers, the percentages of heads of families born out of
London range from 51 to 59,’ An inquiry made of the Technical Board of the
London County Council on the Building Trades in 1858 showed that ‘41
typical firms in various branches of the building trades having 12,000
employés had only 80 apprentices and 143 learners, instead of 1,600, which
would have been the normal proportion.’ The same Report mentions that
‘among the foremen and operatives who have come before us, not one stated
that he was born or trained in London.’ In these trades the better
positions go inevitably to the country-bred man, with his all-round
training. In the docks alone does the Londoner hold his own. An inquiry
there showed that among the dock-labourers proper more than 72 per cent.
were born in London—a result not calculated to excite any very solid
satisfaction. These facts should arouse serious apprehension concerning
the future of the London-bred citizen. We cannot view with equanimity his
relegation to lower positions, while the better places are given to
better-trained immigrants. We are not prepared to admit that the Londoner
is, on the average, inherently inferior either in intelligence or manual
dexterity to his country-born neighbour.”[140]
These quotations indicate clearly the general aspects of the situation.
They show the small prospects boys enjoy who enter a skilled trade in
London. Parents are not blind to the condition of affairs, and it is not
unnatural on their part to allow the boys to go out as errand-boys, where
at least the immediate earnings are larger and the hope of advancement not
much more discouraging.
2. Clerical and Commercial Occupations.—Including under this head
commercial and professional occupations, and general or local government,
we find in Table I., the type of a working-class district, 6½ per cent.
of parents and 8 per cent. of boys; in Table II., the type of the suburbs,
30 per cent. of parents, and 16½ per cent. of boys; in Table III.,
typical of the East End, 4 per cent. of parents, and 6 per cent. of boys;
in Table IV., typical of London as a whole, 13 per cent. of parents, and
10 per cent. of boys. In the school returns no boy was placed under these
headings unless he appeared in the column “Skilled Work.” In judging of
these results it must be borne in mind that the better positions fall to
those who have had at least a secondary education. Nevertheless, clever
boys, who attend evening schools, have some prospects of advancement. One
feature in the returns was the large number of boys who were apparently
employed with their fathers. In many instances boys obtain their positions
as the result of examination. This is true of several banks, assurance
companies, railway companies, and is becoming the general practice in the
Civil and Municipal Service. Many of these examinations are within the
standard of attainment reached by the cleverer boys in the elementary
schools. The boys at their place of employment are taught sufficient to
enable them to do the work allotted them. This is often of a specialized
character; and without further education they cannot expect to escape from
the lowest ranks of clerks. If well conducted, they can probably obtain a
permanent position when manhood is reached, or, at any rate, are not
discharged because they have become men. Change in the methods of
business, or failure of the concern, may entail dismissal; and after
dismissal a new position is not easily obtained. But the lower ranks of
the clerical profession are ill paid, and the need to present a good
appearance makes serious inroads on the meagre stipend. Unless the boy
continues his education and means to rise, his outlook is not very
encouraging. He has, however, the advantage of supervision, of relatively
short hours, and enjoys the possibilities of attendance at evening
schools. In spite of what is often said to the contrary, taking things as
they are, he has the best prospects of those included in the returns. The
fact that so large a proportion of boys coming from the suburbs is found
in this class would seem to indicate that the more thoughtful parents
share this opinion.
(c) The Passage to Manhood.
The tables quoted on pp. 115-118, and founded on school returns, refer
only to the first occupations of boys as they leave school. It is
unfortunate that no figures exist which trace year by year the later
careers of the boys. All persons, however, who have any intimate knowledge
of the subject agree that the boys repeatedly move in an almost aimless
fashion from one situation to another.
The census returns indicate in a general way the distribution, among the
trades and occupations, of persons of various ages. They do not, however,
give us a yearly survey; and after the age fourteen to fifteen we are
compelled to rest content with figures which cover periods of five years.
The following table is taken from a table printed in a Report to the
Education Committee of the London County Council, made by a special
committee appointed to deal with the apprenticeship question; it is
founded on the 1901 census return:[141]
OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS AND MEN.
Percentages.
| Class of Occupation. |
Age
14-15. |
Age
15-20. |
Age
20-45. |
Age
45-65. |
| Trades and industries |
14·74 |
31·54 |
35·76 |
38·85 |
| Domestic offices or services |
1·75 |
3·29 |
3·55 |
3·35 |
| Transport (including messengers, errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) |
27·65 |
19·49 |
16·04 |
14·19 |
| Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, and dealers |
6·03 |
12·52 |
14·51 |
9·23 |
| Commercial occupations |
4·61 |
11·50 |
9·55 |
12·40 |
| General labour |
1·46 |
5·53 |
8·46 |
7·02 |
| Professional occupations and their subordinate services |
0·73 |
2·00 |
4·55 |
5·08 |
| General or local government of the country (including telegraph-boys) |
3·01 |
2·53 |
3·70 |
2·24 |
| Defence of the country |
0·15 |
1·77 |
1·40 |
0·62 |
| Without specified occupation or unoccupied (including boys at school) |
39·87 |
9·83 |
2·48 |
7·02 |
| Total number analyzed |
41,889 |
208,921 |
869,466 |
313,949 |
In comparing this table with the tables founded on the school returns, it
must be borne in mind that this table is not confined to persons who have
passed through the elementary schools, but refers to all the inhabitants
of London.
The most striking feature in the table is the marked difference in the
distribution of occupations at the age of fourteen to fifteen, and at
other ages. The third column, which includes persons between the ages of
twenty and forty-five, covers the period of a man’s greatest vigour, and
may be regarded as the normal or stable distribution. Comparing the first
and the third column, it becomes obvious that the first year, at least,
after leaving school is a year of uncertainty and aimless wandering. The
boys have not definitely chosen any particular occupation as their life’s
work. How long is spent in this state of unprofitable drifting the census
returns do not show as the following years are not separated. But the fact
that the distribution in the second column differs materially from the
normal distribution of the third column would seem to indicate that this
period stretches some distance into the years that lie between the ages of
fifteen and twenty.
In default of this general information, we must fall back on special
investigations; and here the facts are drawn from too narrow a circle of
inquiry to be regarded as altogether typical. In his report to the Poor
Law Commission, Mr. Cyril Jackson gives an instructive table[142]
(see p. 145). It is founded on biographies of boys obtained from boys’ clubs,
schoolmasters, and managers of schools.
I have omitted the ages that follow, as the number of boys concerned was
too few to justify any conclusions. The rapid diminution in the number of
boys when the age of eighteen is reached impairs the value of the last
two columns. In general, the districts from which the boys are drawn are
poor; but the fact that the boys come into relation with various
organizations, and were no doubt assisted by them, should lead us to
believe that the picture presented errs, if anything, by being too
favourable. The steady increase in the trades, and the equally steady
decrease in the number of van-boys, Post Office boys, errand and shop boys
during the first three years is instructive. Trades, skilled and
low-skilled, reckoned in percentages, have risen from 39·4 to 50·9, while
the messenger class has fallen from 40·1 to 23·8. The changes in the
earlier years are the most significant, and little stability of occupation
is reached before the age of eighteen. The age of fourteen evidently
represents the year of greatest indecision and maximum drift.
PERCENTAGE OF BOYS IN VARIOUS GROUPS OF OCCUPATIONS AT EACH AGE.
| Occupations. |
Age 14. |
Age 15. |
Age 16. |
Age 17. |
Age 18. |
Age 19. |
| Skilled trades |
11·2 |
14·0 |
16·8 |
17·8 |
18·0 |
16·3 |
| Clerks |
14·6 |
15·0 |
16·4 |
15·2 |
15·4 |
14·3 |
| Low-skilled |
28·2 |
32·8 |
34·1 |
33·9 |
32·5 |
34·1 |
| Carmen |
0·6 |
0·2 |
0·6 |
2·6 |
4·5 |
5·1 |
| Van-boys |
8·2 |
6·6 |
5·2 |
4·9 |
2·8 |
1·2 |
| Post Office |
1·4 |
1·4 |
0·2 |
0·2 |
0·3 |
1·2 |
| Errand and shop boys |
30·5 |
22·0 |
18·4 |
15·0 |
12·6 |
10·3 |
| General and casual labour |
5·3 |
7·0 |
6·7 |
6·9 |
6·4 |
8·7 |
| Army |
— |
0·6 |
0·6 |
1·1 |
3·6 |
4·0 |
| At sea |
0·2 |
0·4 |
0·8 |
1·5 |
2·8 |
3·5 |
| Emigrants |
— |
— |
0·2 |
0·4 |
0·8 |
1·2 |
| Total No. of boys |
485 |
500 |
474 |
448 |
356 |
252 |
| Unemployed |
1 |
2 |
1 |
13 |
22 |
22 |
In other parts of his report Mr. Jackson has endeavoured to follow the
history of boys who have begun life as errand-boys or as van-boys. “From
the forms returned,” he writes, “it seems clear that the theory that boys
can become errand-boys for a year or two, and then enter skilled trades,
cannot be maintained. Very few boys can pick up skill after a year or two
of merely errand-boy work.”[143] Or again: “The chart prepared from the
forms filled in by boys who entered life as errand-boys shows the small
proportion who find any steady and skilled employment afterwards, and
those have ceased to be errand-boys very early. The vast majority become
workers in low-skilled trades or general and casual labourers.”[144] Of
all the “blind-alley” occupations, that of the van-boy appears the most
deplorable. “The life of the van-boy is a rough and somewhat lazy one.
They have long hours, spells of idleness, and considerable opportunities
of pilfering and drinking.”[145] “The chart shows that it is a very low
grade of occupation, and that very few boys who begin as van-boys get into
skilled trades—a far lower percentage, in fact, than errand-boys.”[146]
The second point to be noted in the table founded on the census returns is
the large number—nearly 40 per cent.—of boys of the age of fourteen
returned as without specified occupation or unoccupied (including boys at
school). There are in the elementary schools about 5,000 boys between the
age of fourteen and fifteen, and probably about the same number in
secondary schools. Converted into percentages, this 40 per cent. would be
broken up into 24 per cent. at school and 16 per cent. without specified
occupation. The last figure is high, and justifies the conclusion, not
only that the boys of fourteen wander from occupation to occupation, but
that they also are frequently doing nothing. The habit of shifting from
situation to situation necessarily involves considerable periods of
unemployment. Thus early in their career the boys become accustomed to the
evils of casual labour.
We can arrive at the same conclusion by approaching the problem from a
somewhat different point of view. If in some trades we discover an excess
of boys, and in others an excess of men, it is clear that there must be
shocks and shiftings in the passage from youth to manhood. In London the
number of lads between the ages of fourteen and twenty is 17·5 per cent.
of the number of males between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five. If,
therefore, we find the proportion of lads to total males engaged in any
trade, reckoned in percentages, differs much from 17·5, either lads must
at some time pass out of the trade or men come in. On the other hand, in a
trade where this percentage is approximately 17·5 boys who enter have, at
any rate, the chance of finding employment as men. In this sense we may
regard the distribution of lads and men in a trade as normal when this
percentage lies between 15 and 20; less than normal when it drops below
15; more than normal when it rises above 20. The following table may be
taken as an example of trades in which considerable numbers of persons are
engaged:
| Trade. |
Number in
1,000 of Males
Aged 14-20. |
Number in
1,000 of Males
Aged 14-65. |
Number in
Percentage. |
| Less than Normal: |
|
|
|
| Building trades |
13·2 |
144·2 |
9·1 |
| Skin, leather, etc. |
2·6 |
8·5 |
14·1 |
| Food, tobacco, drink, and lodging |
19·9 |
135·2 |
14·8 |
| General labour |
15·0 |
111·1 |
13·5 |
| General or local government |
6·5 |
45·8 |
14·3 |
| Professional |
4·8 |
62·2 |
7·8 |
| Normal: |
|
|
|
| Domestic services |
7·8 |
51·7 |
15·1 |
| Commercial occupations |
25·9 |
131·1 |
19·8 |
| Metals, machines, etc. |
14·4 |
92·7 |
15·5 |
| Precious metals |
6·6 |
36·5 |
18·2 |
| Furniture, etc. |
9·3 |
59·5 |
15·7 |
| Textile fabrics |
4·1 |
23·5 |
17·3 |
| More than Normal: |
|
|
|
| National Government (messengers, etc.) |
3·9 |
13·5 |
29·2 |
| Clerks, office-boys, etc. |
23·1 |
83·0 |
27·8 |
| Transport, errand-boys, etc. |
52·3 |
236·3 |
22·1 |
| Printers |
7·1 |
34·1 |
20·7 |
If we could have taken the period fourteen to eighteen instead of fourteen
to twenty, these tables would have been even more striking than they are.
But, even as they are, they are sufficient to enforce the lesson that
between the occupation of the boy and the occupation of the man there is a
gulf fixed. The one does not lead naturally to the other. When the boy
becomes a man he does not find provided for him a natural opening; with
more or less pains, he is driven to force a way in trades for which he has
received no definite preparation, and in which diligence and good
character do not afford any guarantee of success.
(d) Summary.
Before proceeding to examine the conditions of boy labour in other parts
of the country, it will be desirable to summarize the results for London,
and so to determine how far the essentials of a true apprenticeship system
are found in that city.
Supervision.—The boy should be under adequate supervision until he
reaches the age of at least eighteen. In London, so far as the majority
are concerned, all State supervision ends at fourteen. When the boy goes
out to work what measure of supervision was previously found in the home
comes to an end; it is beyond the power of parents to exert any real
control over the boy. He is his own master, finds his employment for
himself, and leaves it when he thinks fit. Philanthropic enterprise
touches a fringe, and a fringe only, of the boys; their growing sense of
independence resents restraint. The story of the workshop points the same
moral. Personal relations between boy and employer are seldom possible;
and where the demand for the services of boys is unlimited and
unsatisfied, attempts to enforce discipline fail, because, sooner than
submit, the boy seeks another situation.
Training.—For the unskilled labourer of the future London provides no
training. The schools do, indeed, turn out in the boys ready made and
completely finished articles for boy-work and “blind-alley” occupations,
and three or four years of such employment destroy the most-marked results
of elementary education. The skilled workman of the future finds in the
workshop small chance of gaining that all-round training which will make
of him a man, and not a machine. Technical education for the minority is
successful, but without power to compel attendance and limit the hours of
boy-labour it is only the few who can avail themselves of the
opportunities offered.
Opening.—Boys’ work is separated from man’s work, and there is no broad
highway leading from the one to the other. The lad of eighteen is
compelled to make a new beginning just when new beginnings are most
difficult. His power of learning is gone from him, and in the unskilled
labour market alone does he see any prospect of earning immediate wages.
The State Labour Exchange is an infant which has yet to justify its
creation.
In London the provision of supervision, of training, of an opening, is
alike defective, and beyond the age of fourteen for the majority of boys
can hardly be said to exist at all; and, what is most serious, we are face
to face with a state of affairs where there is no sign of improvement, and
where all tendencies indicate for the future an accelerated rate of
progressive failure. In short, London cannot claim even the beginnings of
a real apprenticeship system.
§ 2. OTHER TOWNS.
Among the cities London does not stand alone in its conditions of boy
labour. It may indeed be regarded as the most extreme example of
urbanization, but it is nothing more; it is a normal type, not an
exception or monstrous exaggeration. As the capital of the Empire and the
seat of government, it has its own characteristics, but so likewise has
every other town. But dominating all these local variations and giving
uniformity to the conditions of boy labour in our cities, remain the
common features of the industrial development of to-day. This, at any
rate, is the unanimous testimony of all those investigators—and they have
been many—who have studied the problem.
I shall not, therefore, make any attempt to apply to other towns the
detailed method of investigation I have endeavoured to employ in the case
of London. It will be enough to show that the general conditions are the
same. What differences exist are differences of degree, and not
differences of kind.
(a) The Employment of School-Children.
The investigations of the Interdepartmental Committee has proved beyond
doubt that throughout the country it is common for children, while still
attending school, to work long hours for wages. One or two quotations
will be sufficient to justify this statement. The Report declares “that,
as the door has been closed to their employment in factories and workshops
and during school-hours, there has been a tendency, which many witnesses
believe to be an increasing one, towards their employment in other
occupations before morning school, between school-hours, in the evening,
and on Saturdays and Sundays. Provided they make eight or ten attendances
every week, they may be employed (with a few exceptions, and these little
enforced) in the streets, in the fields, in shops, or at home, for the
longest possible hours, and on the hardest and most irksome work, without
any limit or regulation.”[147] Evidence abounded to show that such
possibilities of overwork were frequently realized. Examples have already
been quoted in the case of London, and it is unnecessary here to go over
the same ground again.
That legislation, as at present enforced, has done little to cure the evil
of overwork may be seen from the reports of school medical officers. Some
of these are quoted in the Annual Report for 1909 of the Chief Medical
Officer of the Board of Education. The school medical officers were not
asked to report specially on the problem, but their inspection of
school-children revealed the magnitude of the evil.
“Several school medical officers report on the question of child labour
during 1909. Dr. Thresh (school medical officer, Essex) places on record
the serious extent to which children are employed out of school-hours in
the Grays and Tilbury districts, and gives many individual examples. Dr.
Forbes (school medical officer, Brighton) gives some interesting
particulars from a statement prepared by the Inspector under the
Employment of and Cruelty to Children Acts. In this area the head-teachers
furnish regularly lists of children known by them to be employed out of
school-hours. Among these children it was found that 39, 25, and 22 per
cent. were illegally employed during 1907, 1908, and 1909 respectively.
Dr. Clarke (school medical officer, Walthamstow) found that 19 per cent.
of the boys examined were employed out of school-hours, of whom 19 per
cent. worked an average of eleven hours per week; 32 per cent. worked ten
hours and over on Saturdays; 20 per cent. worked twenty hours or over
during school-days. A full analysis of all children known to be employed
out of school-hours at Yeovil is made by Dr. Page (school medical
officer), who found that 22 per cent. of all children eight years of age
and upwards were so employed, and of these 40 per cent. worked for twenty
hours and upwards per week. Dr. Hope (school medical officer of Liverpool)
produces evidence to show how usefully medical inspection may be linked up
with the arrangements made to put into force by-laws relating to the
employment of children. Thus, all cases where there was reason to suppose
that the by-laws were being infringed were reported to the Sanitary
Department. These children cases numbered 308 during the year, and a table
is given showing in what manner they were dealt with. At Leamington, 119
boys and 30 girls were reported by Dr. Burnet as employed in a
wage-earning capacity either before or after school-hours, and 90 boys and
11 girls both before and after school-hours. Of these, 63 children were of
subnormal nutrition, 22 were suffering from anæmia, 2 from phthisis, 8
from heart disease, and 25 had enlarged tonsils. Several of these children
were quite unfit for such employment, and the subject is deserving of a
thorough investigation with a view to adopting protective measures where
necessary. At Southport, 131 leaving boys (32·7 per cent.) were found to
be doing unskilled or casual work, and in Oldham 179 of the children
inspected were similarly engaged.”[148]
As in London, so in other parts of the country, school-children work for
long hours, and no adequate means exist at present to prevent the evil. As
in London, so in other parts of the country, signs of serious physical
weakness are the common accompaniments of this employment, and the health
of the rising generation is injured. As in London, so in other parts of
the country, the forms of employment in which children are engaged are
uneducational, and tend to lead children, when school-days are over, into
the “blind-alley” occupations.
Besides these children, there are about 38,000 “half-timers.”[149] It is
needless here to dilate on the evils of the half-time system, which allows
children who have reached the age of twelve to spend half the day in the
factory and workshop. It is condemned by all qualified to pass on it an
impartial judgment. Its continuance reflects little credit on the humanity
of those employers and those trade unions who have repeatedly opposed its
abolition.
(b) The Entry to a Trade.
The survey of conditions of juvenile employment in London made clear
certain facts. There was the growing demand for boys in what has been
called “blind-alley” occupations, and the demoralizing effect of such
work. There was the difficulty of obtaining adequate training for those
who had entered a skilled trade. There was a general lack of supervision
in the workshop. And, finally, there was no easy passage from youth to
manhood. It is impossible to read the Report of the Poor Law Commission
and the volumes of evidence, or to study the various investigations into
the conditions of sundry towns, without being convinced that London is in
no way peculiar. The chief difficulty in approaching the problem lies in
the selection of the all too numerous witnesses.
The Report of the Poor Law Commission probably provides the best summary
of the mass of evidence on the subject. Both Reports—Majority and
Minority—alike realize the gravity of the problem, not for London alone,
but for the whole of the country. “The problem,” says the Majority Report,
“owes its rise in the main to the enormous growth of cities as
distributive centres, giving innumerable openings for errand-boys,
milk-boys, office and shop boys, bookstall-boys, van, lorry, and trace
boys, street-sellers, etc. In nearly all these occupations the training
received leads to nothing; and the occupations themselves are, in most
cases, destructive to healthy development, owing to long hours, long
periods of standing, walking, or mere waiting, and, morally, are wholly
demoralizing.”[150] Or, again: “The almost universal experience is that in
large towns boys, owing to carelessness or selfishness on the part of the
parents, or their own want of knowledge and thought—for the parents very
often have little voice in the matter—plunge haphazard, immediately on
leaving school, into occupations in which there is no future, where they
earn wages sufficiently high to make them independent of parental control
and disinclined for the lower wages of apprenticeship, and whence, if they
remain, they are extruded when they grow to manhood.”[151] Or, to go to
the Minority Report: “There are the rivet-boys in shipyards and boiler
shops, the ‘oil-cans’ in the nut and bolt department, the ‘boy-minders’ of
automatic machines, the ‘drawers-off’ of sawmills, and the ‘layers-on’ of
printing works, and scores of other varieties of boys whose occupations
presently come to an end.”[152] Or, again: “In towns like Glasgow,
Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, the proportions of van-boys, etc., are as
large as in London.”[153] Employers do not always conceal the fact: “In
the words of a frank employer, they (the boys) are not taught; they are
made to work continuously at their own little temporary trades.”[154] If
we desire actual figures of those engaged in one class of the
“blind-alley” occupations—messengers—Mr. Jackson tells us that “under
fourteen years of age there are no less than 32,536 (23·5 per cent. of
those occupied under that age), while there are 41,659 aged fourteen, and
54,592 from fifteen to nineteen years of age inclusive, of which it is
probable that the bulk are under seventeen years of age.”[155] Writing of
Norwich, the same writer says: “There seems little doubt that the boy
labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that they are left less
capable members of the community, with little prospect of good work when
they become adults.”[156]
Apart from the Report of the Poor Law Commission, individual writers of
wide and varied experience outside London have voiced the same view. “It
has never been so easy,” writes Dr. Sadler, “as it is in England to-day,
for a boy of thirteen or fourteen to find some kind of virtually unskilled
work, involving long hours of deteriorating routine, in which there is
little mental or moral discipline, but for which are offered wages that
for the time seem high, and flatter his sense of being independent of
school discipline and of home restraint.”[157] And the same writer
continues: “Certain forms of industry, which make large use of boys and
girls who have recently left the elementary schools, are in part (except
where the employers make special efforts to meet their responsibility)
parasitic in character, and get more than they ought, and more than their
promoters realize that they are getting, of the physical and moral capital
of the rising generation.”[158]
The Rev. Spencer J. Gibb, who has devoted special attention to the
problem, writes: “The characteristic evils of boy work invade office work
in a peculiarly subtle and dangerous form. In every city small offices are
to be found in which the whole of the business, such as it is, is carried
on by the master himself, who has frequently to be absent from his
one-roomed office. The office-boy, who constitutes the entire staff, is
meanwhile left in charge. He has probably nothing to do, and spends his
time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or
in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature.”[159] Under such conditions
supervision and control are negligible factors in the training of the
workshop. It seems unnecessary to multiply examples; all persons of
experience lament the increasing employment of boys in “blind-alley”
occupations, and deplore the general lack of supervision.
The question of the skilled trades has received less attention, and there
is much need of such a careful inquiry in various towns as had been made
by Mr. Tawney in the case of Glasgow. Writing of the woodwork trades in
that town, he says: “There is no regular training system; a boy learns
incidentally, and is only shifted from one machine to another when the
shop needs it.... One of its employés was the best producer of wooden
rings in his town, 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.”[160] While of the engineering trades he says: “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.”[161] Specialization is
pushed even farther, and lads are kept to a single machine. Drilling,
milling, slotting, punching, band-sawing, or screwing machines can be used
after a few days’ training, and this is all the experience a boy gets.
And, speaking generally of Glasgow firms, Mr. Tawney says: “Boys are kept,
as a rule, in their own departments. They are not taught; they are made to
work.” These facts were obtained as the result of a careful inquiry among
100 firms in Glasgow.
Glasgow, then, repeats the story of London; and there is good reason to
believe that other towns, if submitted to a similar examination, would
demonstrate the fact of the inadequacy of the workshop training of to-day.
Apprenticeship, according to numerous witnesses, is everywhere decaying,
and there is nothing except the technical school rising to take its place;
and under existing conditions the technical school can touch only a fringe
of the problem.
(c) The Passage to Manhood.
The evidence of the last few pages, relating to the increase in the number
of “blind-alley” occupations and to the inadequate training of the
workshop, would show that, as in London, so likewise in other towns, there
is no easy passage from the work of the youth to the work of the man.
There is a break in the continuity of the service somewhere about the age
of eighteen. New openings have then to be searched for, and new beginnings
made, when the habits of learning have disappeared, even if the
opportunities for it presented themselves.
It would seem superfluous to repeat for other towns the statistical
evidence in support of this statement which was given in the case of
London. “Blind-alley” occupations and troubled passage to manhood
necessarily go together. Mr. Tawney’s researches in Glasgow indicate
clearly the difficulties of this transition period. A single quotation
must suffice: “A district secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers says of a world-famous firm which employs several thousand men
making a particular kind of domestic machine: ‘It is a reception home for
young bakers and grocers. Boys go to it from other occupations to do one
small part of the machine.... When they leave they are not competent
engineers, and find it difficult to get work elsewhere.’”[162] Detailed
figures for the country as a whole in respect of certain trades may be
found in Mr. Jackson’s Report on Boy Labour. All evidence, from
wheresoever collected, goes to show the existence of the break between the
work of the boy and the work of the man.
It is trusted that sufficient evidence has been produced to prove
conclusively that the conditions of boy labour in London do not differ
essentially from the conditions of boy labour in other towns. The evidence
could have been multiplied indefinitely and, what is most striking, among
the mass of witnesses forthcoming there is none found to venture a
contrary opinion. We may take it, then, as a well-established fact that in
other towns besides London, supervision, training, and the provision of an
opening are alike gravely and progressively defective. In other words,
among the urban districts of the country no true apprenticeship system
exists or is in course of creation.
§ 3. RURAL DISTRICTS.
No comprehensive inquiry has been made into the conditions of boy labour
in rural districts and small towns. A few studies of individual villages
exist—as, for example, “Life in an English Village,” by Miss Maude
Davies—but these are not sufficiently numerous to justify any general
conclusions. The return on Children Working for Wages, made to the House
of Commons in 1899, gives certain statistics. From the returns on pages 21
and 23 we see that for England and Wales some 5·2 per cent. of children
above Standard I. were working for wages. The percentage for boys alone
would be 8·5 per cent., or for boys eleven years and upwards about 17 per
cent., compared with 24 per cent. for London alone. These figures would
seem to show that, while common, work among school-children over the
country as a whole does not quite reach the London level. So far as can be
gathered from the returns, it is in towns that the employment of
school-children is most frequent, though in rural districts it is frequent
enough to constitute a grave evil.
The same return gives the occupation of children as they leave school. On
page 163 is the summary.
The table is incomplete: “In London the proportion of children is no less
than 94 per cent.; in the group of large urban districts, 72 per cent.;
while in the rest of England and Wales, including the rural districts and
small towns, the percentage sinks to 47.”[163] Without a careful analysis,
such as only local knowledge could supply, it would be dangerous to give
much weight to the return. It does, however, appear from the summary that
“blind-alley” occupations bear a close relation to urbanization, and that
the two increase together. Or looking at the question from another point
of view, a boy in rural districts enjoys greater opportunities of
continuity of employment in the passage from youth to manhood than he does
in the towns.
OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS ON LEAVING SCHOOL IN (1) LONDON, (2) LARGE URBAN AND
MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS, AND (3) RURAL AND SMALL URBAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.[164]
| Occupation. |
London. |
Large Urban and
Manufacturing
Districts. |
Rural and
Small Urban
Districts. |
| |
No. |
% |
No. |
% |
No. |
% |
| Agriculture |
101 |
— |
730 |
2 |
17,950 |
26 |
| Building |
787 |
3 |
1,973 |
4 |
3,744 |
5 |
| Woodworking |
905 |
4 |
591 |
1 |
661 |
1 |
| Metal, engineering, and shipbuilding |
949 |
4 |
4,090 |
8 |
3,119 |
4 |
| Mining and quarrying |
— |
— |
1,584 |
3 |
6,510 |
9 |
| Textile |
49 |
— |
6,046 |
13 |
5,522 |
8 |
| Clothing |
665 |
3 |
1,634 |
3 |
1,612 |
2 |
| Printing and allied trades |
1,121 |
4 |
868 |
2 |
680 |
1 |
| Clerical |
2,060 |
8 |
5,666 |
12 |
2,727 |
4 |
| In shops |
3,584 |
14 |
6,084 |
13 |
7,045 |
10 |
| Errand, cart, boat, etc., boy |
10,283 |
40 |
10,496 |
22 |
9,917 |
14 |
| Newsboy and street vendor |
964 |
4 |
1,472 |
3 |
1,223 |
2 |
| Teaching |
120 |
— |
430 |
1 |
557 |
1 |
| Domestic service |
301 |
1 |
173 |
— |
1,090 |
2 |
| Miscellaneous and indefinite |
2,256 |
9 |
4,159 |
9 |
4,817 |
7 |
| Total occupied |
24,145 |
94 |
45,996 |
96 |
67,174 |
96 |
| No reported occupation |
1,623 |
6 |
2,097 |
4 |
2,765 |
4 |
| Grand total |
25,768 |
100 |
48,093 |
100 |
69,939 |
100 |
There is good reason to believe that the prospects of an all-round
training are more favourable in a village than in a town. The fact,
already mentioned, that immigrants from rural districts obtain the better
positions in London trades, especially in the building trades, would seem
to justify this conclusion. There is also the general consideration that
rural districts are always nearly a century behind the industrial
development of the towns, and represent therefore an older condition of
affairs. Workshops are smaller, the gulf between man and employer less
impassable, and the old paternal relation between boy and master more
possible of attainment. We may therefore assume, without much risk of
error, that training is better in rural districts than in towns.
On the other hand, while it is true that in industrial progress the
villages lag behind the towns, they still follow them, though at an
interval. Machine-made goods, especially in the woodwork trades, are in
villages replacing the hand-made goods, and the demand for manual
dexterity is to this extent decreasing. It would also seem to be true that
the old indentured apprenticeship is falling into disuse. In the Wiltshire
village of Corsley, for example, while apprenticeship occupied a prominent
position in the past, in the story of to-day it passes almost without
mention. In Miss Davies’s[165] study of the occupations of the inhabitants
of that village, only one apprentice is mentioned. It is also a fact that
those who are concerned with the administration of local charities for
apprenticeship are finding increasing difficulty in discovering masters
who are willing to take boys as indentured apprentices, even for a
premium, and boys who are desirous of being indentured.
We may, perhaps, therefore assume that, while the conditions of boy labour
are more favourable in rural districts than they are in towns, the old
machinery of training is falling into disuse, and no adequate substitute
is taking its place.
V.
The Break-up of Apprenticeship.
The survey of the elements that make up the apprenticeship of to-day is
now complete. Each of the factors which contribute to the result—the
State, Philanthropy, the Home, the Workshop—has been examined, and their
influence appraised. It is therefore possible to pass judgment on the
system, and, by realizing the present situation in all its relations, to
understand clearly the nature and the extent of the problems which call
for solution in the immediate future.
The period of apprenticeship has been shown to divide itself naturally
into two parts. There are the years during which the boy is at school,
ending somewhere about the age of fourteen. For the right use of these
years we have seen that the State is beginning to accept full
responsibility. Whether we have been concerned with the conduct, the
physical welfare, or the training of the child, we have found collective
enterprise assuming new duties, and carrying them out with a growing
enthusiasm. Nor can we have remained blind to the large measure of success
achieved. If defects here and there mar the result, they are clearly the
defects that belong to all experiments in the early stages, and are
obviously not the ineradicable faults of a worn-out system. In short, so
far as regards the earlier years of the apprenticeship of to-day, there is
no cause for despondency. Progress is the distinguishing characteristic of
this first period; the boy is the centre of influences increasing in
number, and deliberately planned to promote his well-being. One
disquieting phenomenon that calls for attention is the large mass of
school-children working long hours. Health is undermined, the effect of
education impaired; while the occupations, essentially of the
“blind-alley” type, encourage an unfortunate taste for this form of
employment. Further, the various local authorities, especially in rural
districts, have been very lax in using the powers conferred by the
Employment of Children Act.
The second stage of apprenticeship covers the years between the ages of
fourteen and eighteen. In our survey of this period we have been unable to
find much cause for satisfaction. The State no longer recognizes its
responsibility for the well-being of all its youth; it is content to offer
opportunities of training to those who are able and willing to avail
themselves of these advantages, and these last form only a small minority
of the whole. The success of evening schools, technical institutes, and
other places of higher education, so far as concerns those who come within
that sphere of influence, only adds to our regret that that sphere of
influence is so narrowly restricted. The majority, at least two-thirds, of
the boys pass out of the control of the State, and for the completion of
their apprenticeship we must look in other directions. Our search in these
other directions has met with little reward; we have found everywhere
failure, and, what is worse, failure that is rapidly progressive. Nowhere
on a large scale can we discover provision made for the supervision and
training of juveniles; from all sides we receive a tumult of complaint
that things have gone astray. Philanthropic enterprise, whether
represented by the religious bodies or lads’ clubs, laments the lack of
control over the boys, and frankly confesses its inability to deal
satisfactorily with more than a small minority. The testimony of the home
is the same; parents complain of the growing independence of their
children, and to a large extent have ceased to attempt to exert any
restraint over the conduct of their sons. Under the stress of modern
industrial conditions and accentuated urbanization, the old patriarchal
system of the family has broken down; the home represents an association
of equals, in which, perhaps, the young can claim a predominant influence.
When we pass to the workshop, in the hope of reaching law and order and
constructive thought, it is only to be confronted with the most signal
example of an organization which defies every principle of a true
apprenticeship system. That the boy of to-day is the workman of to-morrow
is a thought that suggests itself to only a few of the most enlightened
employers. To the many he is merely a cheap instrument of production to be
used up, and then scrapped as waste machinery. He is kept at “his own
little temporary task”; and, to make things worse, he is in so much demand
that discipline cannot keep him very steadily even to this, or his
services will be withdrawn. With the separation of man’s work from boy’s
work there is no easy passage from youth to manhood. With the minute
subdivision of operations, there is small chance of a lad in a skilled
trade becoming a master of his craft.
Apart from the small amount of medical inspection required by the Factory
and Workshop Act, no attempt is made to insure that the growing lad is
physically fit for the work in which he is engaged. His health is the
concern of no one till its breakdown brings him under the Poor Law or
thrusts him into the ranks of the unemployable. Undisciplined, with health
and training neglected, the lad of eighteen tends to find himself more and
more left without prospects, and a person for whom no one in particular
has any particular use. In short, our survey of the problem of the
apprenticeship of to-day shows conclusively that we have, in the true
sense of the word, no apprenticeship system. The old apprenticeship system
has broken up, and there is nothing come to take its place.
It would be incredible if serious consequences did not accompany this
complete break-up of the apprenticeship system; and it needs but little
search to discover evils of far-reaching significance. There is first the
evil of an uncontrolled youth. A child at the age of fourteen is not
fitted to enjoy the independence of an adult. This statement is a truism,
but there is tragedy in the fact that society of to-day confers, as we
have seen, this irresponsible freedom, in a more or less unqualified form,
on the majority of boys when they leave the elementary schools. In the
hooligan of the streets or in the youthful criminal we have the most
striking example of the fruits of an undisciplined boy. The report of the
Commissioners of Prisons for the year ending March 31, 1908, makes this
clear. Writing of the Borstal Association, they say: “In this admirable
report” (the report, that is, of the Borstal Association), “which should
be studied by all who are interested in the causes of crime, after
specifying many circumstances which induce the criminal habit, they refer
in particular to the absence of any system of control or organization for
the employment of the young, as one of the principal causes of
wrong-doing. ‘When a boy leaves school the hands of organization and
compulsion are lifted from his shoulders. If he is the son of very poor
parents, his father has no influence, nor, indeed, a spare hour, to find
work for him; he must find it for himself; generally he does find a job,
and if it does not land him into a dead alley at eighteen he is fortunate,
or he drifts, and the tidy scholar becomes a ragged and defiant corner
loafer. Over 80 per cent. of our charges admit that they were not at work
when they got into trouble,’”[166] The Poor Law Commission calls attention
to the evil effects of certain forms of employment which the boys choose
because of the freedom they give.“‘Street-selling, for example,’ says the
Chief Constable of Sheffield, ‘makes the boys thieves.’ ‘News-boys and
street-sellers,’ says Mr. Cyril Jackson, ‘are practically all gamblers.’
‘Of 1,454 youths between fourteen and twenty-one charged in Glasgow during
1906 with theft and other offences inferring dishonesty, 1,208, or 83·7
per cent., came from the class of messengers, street-traders, etc.,’ says
Mr. Tawney.”[167] And it would be easy to multiply indefinitely examples
of this kind. It must not, of course, be assumed that all boys become
hooligans or criminals, but all do suffer from the want of control and the
need of a more disciplined life. Hooliganism is merely an extreme type of
a disease which in a milder form fastens upon the boys who are allowed
unrestrained liberty. The disease is the disease of restlessness—the
restlessness of the town, the dislike of regularity, the joy in change for
change’s sake, and the habit of roving from place to place.
This disease, with the lack of proper technical training, leads on to
unemployment when the age of manhood is reached. Unemployment is not the
fate of the old only; it is becoming common among the young. “The
percentage of men under thirty years of age qualified for assistance
under the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905, was:[168]
| |
Up to March 31, 1906. |
Twelve Months ending
March 31, 1907. |
| London |
23·9 |
27·4 |
| Whole of England |
27·3 |
30·2” |
“It has become clear,” says a manager of boys’ clubs with a very wide
experience, “to all students of the labour problem that a wrong choice of
their first work—or, rather, no choice at all, but a drift into it—is
responsible for the presence of considerable numbers of young men amongst
the unemployed.”[169] The Reports of the Poor Law Commission, Majority and
Minority alike, repeatedly voice the same opinion. “The great prominence
given to boy labour, not only in our evidence, but in the various reports
of our special investigators, leads us to the opinion that this is perhaps
the most serious of the phenomena which we have encountered in our study
of unemployment. The difficulty of getting boys absorbed, through gradual
and systematic training, in the skilled trades is great enough; but when
to this are added the temptations, outside the organized industries, to
enter at an early age into occupations which are not themselves skilled
and give no opportunity for acquiring skill, it seems clear that we are
faced by a far greater problem than that of finding employment for adults
who have fallen behind in the race for efficiency—namely, that the growth
of large cities has brought with it an enormous increase in occupations
that are making directly for unemployment in the future.”[170] The
Minority Report is equally emphatic. “There is no subject,” it says, “as
to which we have received so much and such conclusive evidence as upon the
extent to which thousands of boys, from lack of any sort of training for
industrial occupations, grow up, almost inevitably, so as to become
chronically unemployed or under-employed, and presently to recruit the
ranks of the unemployable. In Glasgow nearly 20 per cent. of the labourers
in distress are under twenty-five, and one-half of them are under
thirty-five.”[171] Or again: “It has been demonstrated beyond dispute that
one of the features of the manner in which we have chosen to let the
nation’s industry be organized is that an increasing number of boys are
employed in occupations which are either uneducative (in the sense of
producing no increase of efficiency and intelligence) or unpromising (in
the sense of leading to no permanent occupation during adult life);
secondly, that there is a constant tendency for certain industrial
functions to be transferred from men to boys, especially when changes in
the processes of manufacture or in the organization of industry are taking
place rapidly. The resulting difficulty is the double one of the
over-employment of boys and the under-employment of men.”[172]
It is hoped that the present chapter may have made clear the various steps
in this unfortunate process of industrial development. First, we have the
qualities which are the result of the school training—qualities of
regularity, obedience, and intelligence—qualities required, indeed, in
all forms of work, but supplying a complete technical outfit alone for the
“blind-alley” occupations. The boys leave school, having had expended on
them in each case a capital sum of public money of about one hundred
pounds. They are valuable assets, and employers have discovered the fact,
and adjusted their methods of production or distribution to make full use
of this new and valuable supply. High wages attract the boy, who makes his
own choice, and earning is regarded as more attractive than the laborious
and less remunerative learning.
This leads on to the second stage, the “blind-alley” occupation or the
skilled trade where there is no real training. Four years of this kind of
work dissipate the effects of elementary education. Too often weakened
physically by long hours of employment, demoralized by the life of freedom
and the fatal facility in obtaining a second job when fancy has made him
throw up the first, robbed by disuse of the power to learn even if the
inclination were present, he is, at the age of eighteen, a distinctly less
valuable asset in the labour market than he was four years before. The
hundred pounds investment of public money intended for life has been
squandered in youth; the employer has possessed himself of it; and when
the boy asks the wages of a man, he is informed that his services are no
longer wanted, and told to transfer them elsewhere.
Then comes the final stage of degeneration—unemployment or
under-employment. The habit, acquired through four years of constant
practice, of throwing up a job on the smallest pretext, remains with the
lad of eighteen, but the facility of finding another is no longer his. The
intensity of the demand for men varies almost inversely with the intensity
of the demand for boys; the two are competitors in the same labour market,
and of the two the boy is the cheaper and the more efficient instrument of
production. Further, habits of boyhood have too often bred a liking for
casual employment, with its frequent holidays. Here, also, the employers
are willing to oblige him; they find it convenient to have at their beck
and call a reserve of labour which can be drawn upon when business is
brisk, and discharged in times of slackness. Finally, if he desires
regular employment, it is none too easy to discover a suitable opening.
The sphere of his usefulness is small; he has for sale a certain amount of
animal strength, none too well developed, but has little else to offer. He
can push and he can pull indifferently well, but in the world of industry
there is not, as is supposed sometimes, an unlimited demand for pulling
and pushing. And all the time he is faced with the fact that recruits to
the army of pushing and pulling are coming from all sides. Men skilled in
the performance of a single operation, and robbed of their well-paid
employment by a new invention; men from decaying trades and incapable
through lack of training of adapting themselves to fresh conditions; men a
little past the vigour of manhood; men discharged for misconduct; men who
have lost their work through the bankruptcy of a company or the death of a
master—all alike, when everything fails them, turn in desperation to
pulling and pushing; and meanwhile machines of novel design decrease year
by year the demand for pulling and pushing.
All these effects, with innumerable variations, are the result of a wrong
start, and of the neglect during the years that lie between the ages of
fourteen and eighteen. Want of supervision, want of technical training,
want of an opening for which special preparation has been given—these are
the three great and characteristic evils of the present industrial
situation. Taken together, they are a negation of all apprenticeship in
the true sense of the word. During the course of the last few years we
have at least learned to know the cause of our suffering, and to know the
cause is at least the first step in the path of prevention. And, further,
we have begun to see rising from the ruins of the old stabilities of life
and the ancient order of industrial organization an edifice—small,
indeed, at the moment, but bearing the mark of constructive thought,
because reared by the growing power of collective enterprise; and, knowing
this, we can turn in a spirit of hope to the task of creating a new
apprenticeship system.