THE TRAINING OF FITTER-APPRENTICES. 419 



Data on the subdivision of the paid employees according to trades 

 is available for the year 1913 only, when fitters and turners 

 formed 41 per cent., other mechanics 20 per cent., and unskilled 

 workmen 39 per cent, of the total employed men. Assuming 

 that this proportion holds, more or less, the percentage of fitter- 

 apprentices to journeymen fitters and turners does not difTer 

 much from 12.5 during the financial year 1914-15. During the 

 war this percentage went up, however, to 15 and over. A study 

 of the growth in the number of workshop employees from 1879 

 to 1914 shows that the increase in the number of apprentices 

 has not kept step ; that is, the number of apprentices 

 is insufificient to supply the demand that is likely to arise for 

 journeymen. The fixing of a higher rate than 12.5 per cent, 

 is, therefore, not only justifiable, it is necessary. This is con- 

 firmed by the experience of the main workshops at Guben ; a 

 yearly average of 640 workmen were employed before the War. 

 of whom 240 were fitters and 25 turners. In normal times about 

 40 vacancies for fitters and two for turners had to be filled an- 

 nually owing to deaths, retirement, pensioning, becoming officials 

 or taking employment with private firms. Of these 42 vacancies, 

 generally not more than 9 — i.e., 22 per cent., or scarcely more 

 than one-fifth — could be filled from the apprentice ranks; the 

 management had to turn to outside industries for the remaining 

 78 per cent. Even this 22 per cent, were not permanent ; only 

 80 per cent, of the apprentices remain in the railway service, 

 and of these many become railway officials. Thirty-four per 

 cent, only remain permanently with the railway as mechanics. 

 So that [as far as Guben is concerned] only 7 of every 100 

 vacancies for fitters and turners are permanently filled by former 

 apprentices ; now this is the pc sition in a main workshop which 

 trains apprentices ; in other main and auxiliary workshops which 

 do not do so [of which there are 22] it is a mere chance if all 

 the vacancies have not to be filled from sources outside the rail- 

 way workshops. This is disquieting ; good mechanics are gener- 

 ally better paid at the start in private works than in the railway 

 shops, particularly in the West. There is, therefore, the danger 

 that the less efificient men who do not get on in the works of 

 private firms will drift to the railway shops, where they will 

 have to be accepted owing to the scarcity of labour. This high 

 percentage of extraneous and indififerent labtur will tend to lower 

 the output of the whole works. 



The number of apprentices [taken] could be very consider-r 

 ably increased, the more so that the supply of [would-be] appren- 

 tices is extraordinarily large compared with the [number] of 

 mechanics [offering] . ' It would be bigger still were it not fop 

 the fact that the sons of non-railway workers are not, as a rule, 

 accepted. Most of these [external] applicants do not make 

 written application after verbal informaticjn of the lack of pro= 

 spects [i.e., of this rule]. 'At Guben no written application was 



