Welsh Journals

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING* r-n-m problem of the training of the young work- 1 man into a worthy citizen and not into a street loafer, unemployed and almost unemployable, is one of comparatively recent growth. For this reason, perhaps, no adequate attempt has been made to solve it. Nor is the present crisis, in which even child labour is being consistently winked at by the education authorities, likely to present any satis- factory answer. Indeed, until we have some idea of the causes of this pressing social problem, no solution is possible. For this reason, Mr. Dearie's book, a careful scientific investigation into the conditions of the London boy labourer, is to be heartily welcomed. It is an excellent example of the modern application of scientific method to the bewildering complexities of juvenile labour. The book is the outcome of an attempt to analyse the methods and conditions of trade and education in London. Mr. Dearie has set himself a threefold task: first, to investigate the conditions under which the boy learns his trade, next to describe how he is taught his trade, whether by foreman, employer, or education authority, and last, to enquire why the boy so often does not learn his or any trade, a question involving enquiry into casual boy labour, blind alley occupations and street trading. The conditions revealed by Mr. Dearie's investiga- tions make serious and pathetic reading. They show the essentially casual manner in which the London boy-and the same conditions prevail throughout our industrial centres-u gets to know or picks up his trade, and the even more casual manner in which the trade is learnt. Confusion, disorganisation, and lack of method characterise our industrial training. The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission regards this perpetual recruitment of the unemployable by tens of thousands of boys who, through neglect to provide them with suitable industrial training, may almost be said to graduate into unemployment as a matter of course, as perhaps the gravest of all the grave facts the Commission has laid bare." The boy is, nowadays, kept at school until the age of thirteen to fourteen. He is then turned off, usually with little or no preparation, into any occupation which may be ready to hand. As one employer puts it: "I don't need to take apprentices. If I want a man, there are always some of those poor devils about who are only too glad of a job." One of the main reasons for this confusion Mr. Dearie takes to be the general mixture of methods "Industrial Training," by N. B. Dearie. London: P. S. King & Son. in vogue with regard to factory training. Juvenile labour, in common with all other forms of labour, requires good habits and regular conditions the one a matter of education, the other of the organisa- tion of employment. Neither the one nor the other has been adequately dealt with. No fixed or even uniform standard is observed in the teaching of boys in the workshops. Some trades, like the printing and ship repairing trades enforce certain obligations. but, broadly speaking, the methods of training are irregular and quite haphazard. Moreover, the lads usually take up their trade at the last moment, with little preparation as to its nature and certainty. with but slight concern for, or knowledge of their individual capacity for the work. Thus the absence of any uniform system of choice or of training establishes a premium for those jobs offering the greatest immediate attraction. A lad becomes a labourer because he gets more money than he would as apprentice to a trade. In such manner has developed the modern deplorable tendency to regard wage earning as of more importance than the learning of a trade. Under the old apprenticeship system the lad was regarded primarily as a learner, as a future master-workman. Modern industry demands often that the lad should first be a worker and then get to know his trade. Indeed, the employer considers his lads almost solely from the point of view of their commercial value, and pays them accordingly. They in turn demand wages in pro- portion. Thus the chances of learning a trade are considerably diminished. Unfavourable conditions flourish almost unchecked. There is loss and waste of good material, accentuated, too, by the modern development of machinery and the ever-increasing complexity of mechanical operations, which reduces the workman to a mere unit of the machine. In the making of a boot some 150 operations are involved. The individual worker, thus, rarely sees the finished product in which he has had such a small share, nor can he be expected to take much interest in it. Little wonder that such workmen are half taught. As with education, so it is too, with the organisation of employment. The present methods of wasteful recruiting, the perpetual over supply of unskilled labour, and its inevitable result, the creation of casual labour and of the street hooligan, all aid in swelling the ranks of those who graduate into unemployment." Remedies for these evils, under existing circum- stances, can at best be preventive. In the first place, the regulation and organisation of boy labour is an absolute necessity, always remembering that the lad should, too, have more real freedom of choice