Index | < Previous Page | Next Page >

TYPES OF SCHOOLS FOR MACHINISTS' APPRENTICES

The commission has made inquiries regarding the private schools for machinists' apprentices, maintained by several large manufacturers in this and other states, and has learned that usually a young man entering one of these schools must bind himself under bonds for a considerable sum to remain in the school for the complete course, usually for four years. While some wages are paid to them, it is much less than they can earn after a year or two in the school. In other schools, both public and private, the pupils work in the factories one week and go to school the next.

The opinion of the Beverly commission is that the schools in which the pupils are indentured under a forfeit to stay four years are hampered in various ways by this system, and that on the whole these schools are less favorable to the apprentices than to the manufacturers. On the other hand, the pupils that are merely taken into the shops on half time do not seem to receive that systematic and progressive advancement in learning the different parts of the industry that is desirable. The money value of the product of the boy's labor often seems to be more determinative to the manufacturer than the pupil's progress in learning the trade. To a certain extent, the pupils are exploited in this way for the benefit of the manufacturer. On the other hand, in a mere school where the work is not carried on under the conditions of a real factory. it is almost impossible for the pupil to attain. a practical skill and efficiency equal to that of a good workman in a factory. The workman's time as a factor in the cost of production, never can be sufficiently demonstrated to a pupil in a mere school where his presence and wages do not depend upon his actual productive ability. Neither can the time that may properly be used and the skill required for the different operations be sufficiently understood by the pupil until the product is put to actual commercial use and the pupil re- warded for his work in proportion to his perception and adjustment of these factors of production. Moreover the establishments of independent factory schools involve a very large expenditure for buildings and equipment and a large cost for maintenance and raw materials. This cost is reduced by the sale of products, but the school is at a serious disadvantage both in the purchasing of raw materials and in the marketing of products. Moreover, an independent factory school must establish and maintain its own standards of efficiency in workmanship and production, and its own esprit de corps among its workmen and its own standards of scholarship and equipment in its school, while the industrial school that is affiliated with a first-class factory on the one hand and a first-class school on the other, without being dominated by either factory or school, has constantly before its pupils the best standards, both industrial and educational, which must be powerful incentives to the pupils of the school.


Index | < Previous Page | Next Page >