TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 513 



time has not been, altogether favourable to the training of the skilled worker. If 

 a boy or girl can become a productive worker almost at once, it requires a 

 special knowledge and self-control on his or her part to remain in the position 

 of a learner with a learner's wage for years, in order to become a skilled 

 artisan. Nor are the steps by which young workers may climb to this position 

 made clear to them or to their parents. It is of great importance that they 

 should be shown clearly that training is for their own advantage, and that it is 

 on training that the ultimate scale of their pay and security of their work 

 depends. This may be effected to a great extent by the juvenile branches of the 

 Labour Exchanges co-operating with the Care Committees of Education Authori- 

 ties. Employers could assist by making clear to every beginner the possibilities 

 for advancement, and by doing so would probably build up a more stable 

 working force. 



The decay of the apprenticeship system, which has proceeded with especial 

 thoroughness during the last thirty years, and the recent changes in methods 

 of production and especially the increasing introduction of machinery have, 

 it may be feared, given rise to the impression among many parents that it 

 is useless for their children to be trained as skilled workers. Skill is needed 

 now, as it has ever been, but the type of skill required changes so rapidly 

 as to make industrial foresight very difficult, especially to the young workers 

 and in a lesser degree to the firms which employ them. Even where there is 

 formal apprenticeship, or the definite status of learner, a good deal of time 

 is apparently wasted during the first few years of training, not only in 

 promiscuous fetching and carrying, but in processes which become obsolete 

 during or soon after the period of training. According to the opinion of some 

 credible witnesses, systematisation alone would shorten by some 30 per cent, the 

 long term of apprenticeship demanded in certain trades. 



The relative functions of the technical school and the workshop in the 

 training of the artisan must vary according to the trade, but there are three 

 main directions in which development is desirable. 



(fl) The further establishment of full-time Technical and Trades' Schools, 

 working in close co-operation with the trades concerned and making a 

 special study of the most recent developments in technique and the future 

 prospects, of the sevei'al trade processes. 



(b) The development of part-time Continuation Schools, and of the practice 

 of permitting young employees to attend during working hours, in view 

 of the generally admitted failure of evening instruction at the end of a 

 day's work. 



(c) A workshop training systematised and reduced to the shortest period com- 



patible with efficiency. In some trades this might take the form of a 

 modified apprenticeship adapted to the needs of the time. This should be 

 subject to frequent modification with the alteration of processes, so as to 

 ensure that the apprentice is not required to make sacrifices more than 

 commensurate with his or her gains. In some trades, however, a sys- 

 tematic promotion from one department to another would probably be 

 possible without formal apprenticeship. 



(2) In the metal working trades, especially, and this is also true of some 

 others, all the highly skilled workers are men. The women employed in 

 these trades are either semi-skilled or unskilled. The question arises whether 

 women are capable of becoming highly skilled workers, and if so, whether 

 they would in normal times be preferred to men. This depends on a variety 

 of circumstances, physical, psychological, economic, and social. Some employers 

 in the more skilled trades, e.g., engineering, express a doubt as to whether 

 women could be trained to the same degree of skill as has been attained by 

 highly skilled men, maintaining that women lack as a rule the necessary qualities 

 of judgment and initiative, and dislike shouldering responsibility. This point 

 of view was often expressed in less skilled trades. Other employers expressed 

 different views on these points, being convinced that in time women would 

 be able to attain the skill and initiative of the best men workers, provided 

 the work which they were expected to do did not entail too great a physical 

 strain or was not in other ways harmful or objectionable to them. The 

 1915. L L 



