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PART III.

APPRENTICESHIP IN MINNEAPOLIS.

A careful investigation of apprenticeship as it exists in Minneapolis was made by this department during the summer of 1915. The Minneapolis survey for vocational education, under the auspices of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education was then being carried on, and this department felt that it was an opportune time for a careful investigation of the apprentice question. Professor Gerard Gesell of the University of Minnesota was engaged for the field work and the present report is the result of his investigations.

As a result of these investigations the Dunwoody Institute of Minneapolis has since effected a number of agreements with the employers and employes in the trades, and this new system of apprenticeship thus developed is described in an article by C. A. Prosser, which will be found at the end of this report.

Under strict definition an apprentice is a worker who receives his initiatory training under a legal contract entered into between the employer and the apprentice and his parent, which contract sets forth the terms under which the youth is to be taught a trade. Originally this written indenture provided that in place of the parent, the master or employer was to have the care and custody of the youth during the whole period of apprenticeship, and at the same time to teach him "the art and mystery of the craft." The apprentice in turn agreed through his parent to obey the master and to exchange his services for support and instruction in the trade.

No apprenticeship of this kind exists in any of the trades and industries of Minneapolis. Instead there is a wide variety of schemes and practices which are called apprenticeship and are so designated by the United States Census on Population. These may be classified under five general types: (1) apprenticeship by written contract; (2) apprenticeship by trade agreement; (3) by custom; (4) by the helper system, which is sometimes regulated by trade agreements and sometimes by custom, and (5) apprenticeship by schooling.

1. Apprenticeship by written contract is chiefly distinguished by its absence in Minneapolis. So far as we were able to ascertain this method was used in only three trades: photo engraving, bricklaying and painting. The provisions of the written contract used in each of these trades, which are strongly organized, embody in part the union regulations for apprenticeship. In these written contracts the employer agrees to instruct the youth in the trade, but he is not given the care and custody of the apprentice as in earlier times. Neither does the apprentice exchange his services for instruction and support, as formerly, but instead for instruction and wages, which in the case of bricklayers and photo engravers is stated in the contract.

The written contract used in the painter's trade is little more than an application approved by the employer, and in none of these three trades does the contract cover all of the union rules and regulations. The parent is not made a party to the agreement and these written contracts between the employer and the minor have therefore little or no legal significance. Their provisions are as a rule meagre and very general in character and would have little force but for the fact that the trades are well organized. 2. Apprenticeship by trade agreement occurs when the owner of what is commonly known as a "union" shop agrees, in employing new workers and teaching them the trade, to observe the rules and regulations of the union for the trade, which in this way become the terms of apprenticeship. There are two kinds of apprenticeship by trade agreement in Minneapolis. In the first the conditions of apprenticeship are set forth in the written trade agreement entered into between the employer and the union. This is the form of apprenticeship in the following trades and industries: railroad machinists, compositors on some newspapers, photo engraving,

boiler makers in railroad shops, blacksmiths in the railroad shops, electrotype workers and brewery workers.

The second form of apprenticeship by trade agreement exists when the terms of the apprentice contract are not set out in an agreement with the employer but are governed by the rules and regulations of the national constitution and by-laws of the union. In other cases the trade agreement or understanding with the shop to adhere to the union regulations is not written, but oral or tacit. Apprenticeship of the kind described in this paragraph exists to some extent in the following trades and industries: Electrical workers, stone cutters, plumbers, carpenters, painters, bricklayers, cabinetmakers, compositors in job shops, pressmen, sheet metal workers, steamfitters, plasterers, lathers, patternmakers, bakers, cigarmakers, bar- · bers and book binders.

In general the union by-laws or the trade agreement specify such things as the minimum and maximum age of entrance upon apprenticeship; the number of apprentices allotted to shops of different size; the obligations which the employer assumes in the training of the apprentice; the number of required years of service in apprenticeship preliminary to journeymanship; usually, though not always, the wage to be paid the apprentice during the successive years of his service, and the length of time he is to be employed each year.

3. Apprenticeship by custom usually occurs in what is known as an "open shop" or "non-union shop" and in the unorganized trades. There is in this case no indenture or agreement or understanding between the employer and his employes. Young people are taken on at a learner's wage and are advanced to journeymanship either through an orderly sequence of periods, wages and positions or as rapidly as employers consider that they show themselves competent. Where apprenticeship by custom exists new workers are frequently taken on without even any verbal understanding as to the number of years to be served, wages to be paid each year or the kind of work to be done.

An illustration of this type of apprenticeship is furnished by the milliner's trade. Without any papers of any kind being signed, new girls serve as learners during their first year for little more than their car fare and during their second year receive from $3 to $4 per week. After this their wages are advanced as they show skill in the trade. These girls are called "apprentices" and the plan has become a well recognized custom in practically all the shops of the city where learners are employed.

Apprenticeship by custom of the kind described in the last two paragraphs exists, with one or two exceptions, in all the skilled trades enumerated in the foregoing paragraphs. In general where the trade is strongly organized, practically no apprenticeship by custom occurs, but where the trade is not strongly organized, or not organized at all, a greater or smaller amount of apprenticeship by custom will be found. For example there is no apprenticeship by custom in electrotyping, which is 100 per cent organized. But practically all of the apprenticeship in the carpenter's trade is by custom, as all carpenter shops in the city are open shops. In the machine shops of the railroads, where the unions have agreements, apprenticeship is entirely by trade agreements, but in all of the other machine shops of Minneapolis apprenticeship is by custom.

4. Apprenticeship by the helper system is found in those trades where the work is too arduous for youths and must be done by mature workers. The work is also of such a nature that there is little opportunity for shop training, the helper acquiring the tricks of the trade assisting his principal. This plan is used in such trades as that of the blacksmith, boiler maker and steamfitter. Perhaps the best illustration is in the boiler shop of the railroads, where a new worker, who must be over 21 years of age, starts as a second-class handy man. From this position he may rise by successive steps carefully graduated through 13 classes of boiler makers to that of a first-class boiler maker.

Apprenticehip by schooling occurs when a school is established which gives a greater or less part of the preparation needed for successful work

in some occupation to a student before he enters it as a wage worker. This kind of apprenticeship is not given in the returns of the United States census on occupations because learners in a school preparing to some extent for the work of a trade or occupation are not usually called apprentices. It is included here, however, because the school is already being used in Minneapolis as a means of giving new workers some part of their necessary preparation for a considerable variety of occupations and because the admitted failure of apprenticeship of all other kinds as a means to supply us with trained workers seems to point to the school as a growing means of solving the problem in the future.

There are many types of vocational schools already established in Minneapolis for the training of wage-workers, such as the Dunwoody school, the business colleges, correspondence schools, Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. trade and industrial courses, and various others of lesser importance. The rapid rise of these institutions, unsatisfactory as some of them undoubtedly are, shows not only that in some occupations apprenticeship no longer exists or is inadequate as a means of preparing workers, but also that the school has found a definite place for itself as a substitute.

This is certainly very true in the case of the commercial school which has kept step from the start with the development of the modern office. The commercial world has long ceased to give any systematic training to its employes and relies entirely upon public and private schools of the city for their preparation.

We are here more immediately concerned with the schools which give instruction in trade and industrial subjects. Many of these give both day and evening classes in these subjects. But, in a study of apprenticeship the evening classes may be disregarded. Neither the employers nor the employes of the city consider evening school work valuable except when it gives supplementary instruction to persons who have already had experience in a trade or occupation. Evening classes, which attempt to give trade training on the practical sides to novices are too rudimentary in their teaching, and too limited as to the time available for instruction, to afford any adequate substitute for apprenticeship training. Consequently it is necessary to consider only the day trade and industrial classes of the city.

Only two corporations carry on schools for their employes. One telephone company has a brief course to prepare novices for switchboard work, and one department store has a short course to prepare a part of its employes for salesmanship. But fourteen private schools, operated for profit, give instruction in day classes for lines of employment more or less mechanical in character. These lines are telegraphy, the operation of traction engines, window dressing, barbering, manicuring and hair dressing, automobile repair, sewing and dressmaking.

About 2,000 students are enrolled in these private schools. Some of them undoubtedly do good work and prepare a large number of persons for certain occupations. We were unable to secure any definite information as to the number of people going from the schools into the trades, or as to the success with which they had met as workers. The amount of time given by the student for preparation in most cases does not seem to promise very much training in the nature of apprenticeship, the average time given by the student for completion of work in all the courses, except telegraphy, being about six weeks. These schools occupy only a very limited field and do not cover any of the highly skilled trades. Even if they adequately met the needs of the employments for which they prepare the tuition they charge for very brief courses is prohibitive for most persons.

At a later point in this report there will be a discussion of the effort that is now being made by the Girls' Vocational High School to give girls two years' practical and technical training and to place them as advanced apprentices in the trades, dressmaking, millinery, garment making, salesmanship, and junior nursing. So likewise the effort of the Dunwoody Institute to train boys in a two years' course and place them as advanced apprentices in the trades of electrical working, telephony, carpentry, cabi

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net making, machine shop and automobile repairing and construction, will be discussed.

The number of apprentices in the manufacturing and mechanical industries of Minneapolis in 1909 was 634, according to the United States census, of whom 554 were males and 80 females. Since the census must rely for its classification of workers upon the statements of the workers themselves it is obvious that this number represents a rather rough and uncertain return as to the number of apprentices, and, of course, includes persons from each of the groups of apprentices above considered. It is doubtful whether all the persons employed as helpers to principals are included. It is impossible to accurately estimate the number of apprentices employed in the manufacturing industries to compare with the figures reported by the census because the term apprentice is one that is so loosely used and uncertain in its meaning and scope.

The figures gathered in this investigation from the joint conferences of employers and employes and checked up with the registration of the unions indicates that there are at the present time a total of 441 apprentices in the building trades in Minneapolis, distributed among the trades as follows: Electric workers, 50; plumbers, 82; carpenters, 50; painters, 25; bricklayers, 30; plasterers, 25; steamfitters, 145; cabinet makers, 20; lathers, 4; sheet metal workers, 10.

These figures would seem to indicate either that the census returns of 1909 were too low or that there has been a slight increase in the number of applicants since that time. Assuming that there are at least as many apprentices in the manufacturing industries now as in 1909 (425) and in dressmaking and millinery (80) and adding to these the number of apprentices in the building trades as reported in 1915, there would be approximately 946 apprentices in Minneapolis. It must be understood that at the best these figures are a rough estimate and, aside from discrepancies and erroneous classifications just noted, do not include a small group of apprentices engaged in hand trades other than the building trades.

Even if we could assume that in every instance these 946 apprentices were getting adequate training for the trades in which they were employed they would represent a pitifully small contribution to future workmanship in Minneapolis, which gave employment in 1909 to 53,250 workers.

The conditions of work and of apprenticeship in Minneapolis were found by this investigation to be almost identical with those reported from the other large cities of the country, and indicates that apprenticeship furnishes little hope for the adequate training of workers for the future. About two out of every three of the 53,250 productive workers in Minneapolis are engaged in industries which may on the whole be classified as unskilled or low-grade skilled where there is no apprenticeship and where the conditions of manufacturing are such that there probably never will be any apprenticeship. In the skilled trade the number of apprentices is entirely inadequate.

And

In general what little apprenticeship there is in Minneapolis is to be found in the building trades, the printing trades, the machine shops, tobacco and brewing, which businesses appear to be rapidly increasing in this territory, and in dressmaking and millinery. About one-half of all the apprentices in Minneapolis are to be found in the building trades group. even in these trades in which apprenticeship still joins the principal avenue to entrance to the trade large scale production, specialization and the introduction of machinery to replace old hand processes have made what was formerly a trade into machine work and the old time tradesman into a machine worker no longer able to learn the whole trade nor able to use it in industries which have increased the demand for a kind of unskilled labor which untrained youths and men can furnish.

This may appear to be a gloomy picture both of the opportunities in modern industries to secure apprenticeship training and of the need and opportunity for the well-trained and all-around workman. But the facts are incontestable. On the other hand employers and employes are agreed that while under present conditions the proportion of competent

all-around workmen needed is less than ever before, there is, nevertheless, need for a limited number of them in all trades. One evidence of this is found in the readiness and eagerness with which employers of the city agree to employ the graduates of the two-year courses fitting for different trades offered by the Dunwoody Institute.

Trade conferences were held during the summer with the various trades and both the employers and the employes in practically every trade were agreed that all-around apprenticeship training for the youth entering the industry is greatly needed for the benefit of the worker and the business for one or all of the following reasons:

(1) A more careful selection of men who want to follow the trade results. (2) The apprentice advances into journeymanship with more interest in the calling he has determined to follow as his life work. (3) The best time to get all the knowledge possible about the different machines and processes of the trade is while the learner is young. When apprenticeship training is properly given the youth learns the best way of doing things at the outset, instead of unlearning bad practices in later years. (4) Where training in a school accompanies shop practice the youth gains a technical mastery over processes which would otherwise be mechanical, and acquires the power to adapt himself to the changing conditions of the business as the untrained specialized machine worker never can. (5) His wider knowledge of all the processes gives him an understanding and a sureness even in doing specialized work, which the machine hand cannot have. (6) The apprentice of the future, if some method can be found to teach him in a better way, will not only be the all-around man of the shop, able to cope as a workman with every situation that arises, but also the material out of which the shop is to secure its foreman and its technicians.

"Modern industry may even complete an organization in which all the work is done by machinery made almost automatic and operated by machine hands, but will always have a need of the men who are masters of its processes to bind them all together and to direct the labor of the machine worker."

A free expression of opinion was gained concerning apprenticeship in Minneapolis from those actually at work in the industries. A conference committee for each of the skilled trades, composed of two employers and two representatives of the union, gave not only frank consideration to the problem, but also agreed in most respects both as to the present condition of apprenticeship in the trade and the causes of its decline as an institution. These views were supported by practically every employer and employe with whom the question was discussed. What follows is a summary of these conferences in which the quotations are representative statements from the trades.

Table A presents the principal subjects of discussion in these conferences. While in times past such questions as the age, wage, the period of service and the limitation on the number of apprentices, would have provoked vigorous discussion, none of them, with the exception of limitation of numbers, was given more than a brief consideration. Most of the thought of the conference centered around the present unsatisfactory arrangements for the training of apprentices and the ways in which improvements could be made.

The limitation upon the number of apprentices allotted to a shop under union rules brought out, in surprisingly frank discussions, sharp difference of opinion between employers and the unions. While very few employers even in union shops have the full quota of apprentices to which they would be entitled under union regulations a large majority of them declared that they were opposed to the limitation as a matter of principle. "As employers in shops independent of the unions we are not interested in the limitation imposed by the unions on the number of apprentices, but we have always been against it." Most of the employers declared that the limitation imposed by unions upon the number of apprentices shows that the union favors apprenticeship "not so much as a device for training new workers but as a

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