28 THE POPULAR SCIUNCE MONTHLY, 



tween master and men there came estrangement more and more, until 

 sometimes the workpeople scarcely ever saw their veritable employer. 

 Under these circumstances the conditions of apprenticeship were com- 

 pletely changed, not suddenly, but gradually, until the apprentice be- 

 came merely the boy worker, with less wages but more solemn engage- 

 ments than a journeyman. The master to whom he was bound no 

 longer taught him his trade ; he was, so to speak, pitchforked into the 

 workshop to pick up his trade as best he could, or to learn it from the 

 many journeymen who were there employed. It was no one's duty to 

 teach him ; there was no pay and no responsibility," 



The present state of British commerce brings home the conviction 

 that it is no idle cry that has sounded ever and anon in our ears, warn- 

 ing us of the deterioration in the quality of our manufactures and 

 in the average caliber of our skilled artisans. International exhibitions 

 have from time to time afforded the means of drawing comparisons 

 between the work of other nations and our own work ; comparisons by 

 no means always in our favor, often the reverse. Apprenticeship, with 

 its wholesome rules, having decaj^ed in everything but form, the lads 

 who enter the shops are never pi-operly instructed, but are made the 

 drudges of the older workmen. What wonder that they acquire habits 

 of idleness and carelessness that not only pursue them through the 

 whole of their work, but, worse than this, corrupt and undermine their 

 morals ? What wonder that their manij)ulation is but half acquii'ed, 

 or that the methods and devices they learn to apply are those of half a 

 century ago ; ancient relics of prejudice and unscientific " rules of 

 thumb," handed down by the tradition of the shops, a veritable sur- 

 vival of the unfittest ? Without the shadow of a doubt the truth that 

 there is and alas, that there is much truth in the outcry concerning 

 the inferiority of training and capacity of the British artisan, may be 

 very largely imputed to the relaxation and degeneration of the old 

 system of apprenticeship ; for, with all its faults, it did at least pro- 

 vide that a skilled master should become personally responsible for the 

 training of the apprentice in his craft. In that famous codicil to his 

 will wherein Benjamin Franklin devised so many thoughtful legacies 

 to promote the well-being of the land and city of his adoption, he 

 wrote and we must remember how intimate and many-sided was his 

 acquaintance with the condition of labor in his day these ever-mem- 

 orable words : ^^ I have considered that, among citize7is, good appren- 

 tices are most likely to make good citizens.'''' If this be true, seeing 

 how rare a good apprentice is in the j^resent day, the aphorism instilled 

 into our ears as schoolboys, Boni cives rari (good citizens are scarce), 

 threatens to receive a weighty comment from the experience of the 

 nineteenth century ! Be this as it may, a very little consideration will 

 show how real is the crisis to be faced, and how irrevocably of the 

 past the apprenticeship of the past is. 



What, then, must be done ? " Apprenticeship is absolutely neces- 



