THE TRAINING OF FITTER-APPRENTICES IN THE 

 WORKSHOPS OF THE PRUSSIAN-HESSIAN STATE 

 RAILWAYS.* 



By W. J. HoRNE, Capt. R.G.A., A.M.I.C.E., 

 Organiser, Technical Education, Transvaal. 



Read July lo, 1919. 



Far-seeing measures were taken in the seventies to deal with 

 the apprenticeship problem in Germany. About 1874 Bismarck, 

 having returned about this time from an exhibition of world 

 industries in America, stated that great improvement was needed 

 in German manufactures ; he had found manufactured articles 

 from his country much surpassed in quality by the manufactures 

 of other countries, and particularly of Great Britain. That was 

 practically the beginning in Germany of provision for the 

 organized training of apprentices in trades. Enquiry into exist- 

 ing provisions were forced by the German Government, and 

 early in 1878 an " imperial decree " was issued calling for reports 

 from various industries and works on the question of apprentice- 

 ship training. As a result of the reports forwarded by the 

 various railways at that time under the control of various minor 

 German States, the Minister for Commerce, Industries and Public 

 Works^ issued the following decree: — 



'' The reports made consequent upon the Decree of February 19th, 

 1S78, have shown me that attempts made up to the present to train young 

 people as mechanics in the big railway workshops have been few, ancl 

 attended with but a comparatively slight measure of success. It is com- 

 plained that many of the apprentices leave their work even during the 

 apprenticeship period, and that finally only a small proportion of the 

 trained m^en remain on in the workshops. It is pointed out that the 

 peculiar conditions in the repair shops are bound to lead to a one-sided 

 and inadequate training for the apprentices ; that neither foremen nor 

 charge-hands are in a position to carry out the strict supervision neces- 

 sary; that, in view of the inexperience of the apprentices and the 

 danger attaching to the work done, the apprentices are exposed to the 

 risk of injury, for which the companies are obliged to take responsibility; 

 that unsupervised companionship with workmen has a bad influence on 

 the morals of the apprentices ; and, finally, that in most places there is 

 no need to train apprentices because there is a sufficiency of skilled men 

 available, and that, where this is not the case, the present system might 

 be retained in an improved and extended form, but it will always be 

 a matter of great difficulty to keep the men so trained bound to the 

 shops, since they invariably prefer to go off to other districts, partly in 



* Abstracted from a lecture given by B. Schwarze, Doc.Engr., to the 

 Association of German Mechanical Engineers, September 19th, 1916. — 

 An endeavour has been made to give the sense rather than the 

 letter of the lecture, and, therefore, paraphrases have been freely used. 

 The order of certain sections also has been changed, so as to give a 

 better continuity. For Notes see end of paper, p. 424. 



