Boy Labour and Apprenticeship
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Title: Boy Labour and Apprenticeship
Author: Reginald A. Bray
Release date: March 28, 2012 [eBook #39291]
Language: English
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BOY LABOUR AND APPRENTICESHIP
* * * * *
SOME PRESS OPINIONS
Times.--"The problem already felt acutely in London and in large towns has
now appeared even in the country town and village, and to those who still
doubt its extent or seriousness we commend this most instructive work."
Morning Post.--"An important book on an important subject."
Daily News.--"Mr. Bray's book is as full of counsel as of instruction, and
it should be in the hands of every student of one of the most serious of
social problems."
* * * * *
BOY LABOUR AND APPRENTICESHIP
by
REGINALD A. BRAY L.C.C.
Author of "The Town Child"
Second Impression
London
Constable & Co. Ltd.
1912
PREFACE
We are beginning to realize clearly that all is not well with the youth of
this country. From all sides complaints of neglect, and the evils of
neglect, are thronging in. Boys as they leave school are casting off the
shackles of parental control, and, with no intervening period of youth,
are assuming the full independence of the adult. The old apprenticeship
system is falling into disuse, and methods of industrial training are at
once unsatisfactory and, for the majority, difficult to obtain. Boys in
increasing numbers are entering occupations where they learn nothing and
forget all they have previously learned, and in which they can see no
prospects of employment when manhood is reached. As a consequence, there
is a general drift into the army of unskilled labour, and later into the
ranks of the unemployed. All expert opinion is unanimous in voicing these
complaints. The Report of the Poor Law Commission, Majority and Minority
alike, with its volumes of special inquiries and evidence, is one long
testimony to the gravity of the evils which are the consequence of
neglected youth.
Further, we are coming to understand that the period of adolescence forms
a critical epoch in the development of the lad. "The forces of sin and
those of virtue never struggle so hotly for possession of the youthful
soul." [1] And the boy too often is left to fight out this struggle without
assistance, and even without advice. The conditions of modern life are
increasingly hard on youth. "Never has youth," says Mr. Stanley Hall, the
greatest living authority on adolescence, "been exposed to such dangers of
both perversion and arrest as in our land and day. Increasing urban life,
with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive
stimuli, just when an active objective life is most needed; early
emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline; the haste
to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time; the mad rush
for sudden wealth, and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth----"
all in increasing degree imperil the passage to manhood.
And, lastly, we are compelled to confess that an evil which is at once a
grave and a growing evil is one which demands immediate attention. It is
not a problem that can be laid on the shelf for that convenient season
which never arrives, when legislators have nothing else to think about.
There is urgent need for reform in the near future, unless we would see a
further degeneration of the youth of the country.
The object of this volume is altogether practical--to show what reforms
are necessary to prevent the growth of the evil by laying the foundation
of a new and true apprenticeship system. But to achieve this object it is
necessary first to explain how the problem was dealt with in days gone by,
when life was more stable and industrial conditions less complex; and,
secondly, to understand in detail the characteristic features of the
question as it presents itself to-day. Only with the experience of the
past and the present to guide us can we face the future with any hope of
controlling its destinies.
As "she" is mentioned nowhere else in the volume, it seems desirable to
say a word here about the girl. This book is, indeed, concerned with boys
alone, but, with a few changes in details, all that is written about
conditions, and all that is recommended in the way of reforms, is equally
applicable in her case also.
I have endeavoured, even at the risk of being termed unduly dogmatic, to
make my proposals for reform as definite as possible. I have done so in
the cause of clearness. But if I fail to carry my readers with me all the
way, I shall be well content if only I have succeeded in starting them on
a pilgrimage in quest of the new apprenticeship system.
REGINALD A. BRAY.
ADDINGTON SQUARE,
CAMBERWELL, S.E.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER I
THE ESSENTIALS OF APPRENTICESHIP 1
CHAPTER II
THE OLD APPRENTICESHIP 4
I. The Age of the Gilds 4
II. The Statute of Apprentices 11
III. The Industrial Revolution 20
CHAPTER III
THE AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION 26
CHAPTER IV
THE GUARDIANSHIP OF THE STATE 36
I. State Supervision 36
Sec. 1. State Regulation 37
(_a_) Prohibition of Employment 41
(_b_) Limitation of Hours 43
(_c_) Protection of Health 52
Sec. 2. State Enterprise 59
II. State Training 62
(_a_) The Elementary School 63
(_b_) The Continuation School 65
III. State Provision of an Opening 70
CHAPTER V
APPRENTICESHIP OF TO-DAY 75
I. The Contribution of the State 76
Sec. 1. State Regulation 76
Sec. 2. State Enterprise 83
Sec. 3. Summary 88
II. The Contribution of Philanthropy 89
III. The Contribution of the Home 92
Sec. 1. The Boy of School Age 96
Sec. 2. The Boy after School Days 100
IV. The Contribution of the Workshop 103
Sec. 1. London 104
(_a_) The Employment of School-Children 105
(_b_) The Entry to a Trade 113
(_c_) The Passage to Manhood 142
(_d_) Summary 149
Sec. 2. Other Towns 151
(_a_) The Employment of School-Children 151
(_b_) The Entry to a Trade 155
(_c_) The Passage to Manhood 160
Sec. 3. Rural Districts 161
V. The Break-up of Apprenticeship 165
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW APPRENTICESHIP 176
I. Supervision 191
(_a_) The Raising of the School Age 192
(_b_) The Prohibition of Child Labour 195
(_c_) The New Half-Time System 197
(_d_) The Parents' Point of View 202
II. Training 207
III. The Provision of an Opening 221
IV. General Conclusions 231
LIST OF AUTHORITIES 241
INDEX 245
BOY LABOUR AND APPRENTICESHIP
CHAPTER I
THE ESSENTIALS OF APPRENTICESHIP
Originally the term "apprenticeship" was employed to signify not merely
the practical training in the mysteries of a trade, but also that wider
training of character and intelligence on which depends the real
efficiency of the craftsman. Apprenticeship was regarded as a preparation
for life, and not only as a preparation for the workshop. It is in this
sense that the word is used throughout the present volume.
In a volume concerned with any branch of social reform, and consequently
likely to arouse differences of opinion, it is always desirable to start
on good terms with the reader. This can best be done by beginning with
assumptions the truth of which no one is likely to call in question. In
dealing with the problem of boy labour and apprenticeship, it is not
difficult to venture on certain statements which will receive the
unqualified approval of all.
An apprenticeship system worthy of the name must satisfy three conditions.
First, it must provide for the adequate supervision of boys until they
reach at least the age of eighteen. Before that age a lad is not fit to be
his own master, and should remain at least to some extent under the
control of elder persons. Such supervision must have respect both to his
conduct and to his physical development. Secondly, an apprenticeship
system must offer full opportunities of training, both general and
special--the training of the citizen and the training of the worker. And,
lastly, it must lead forward to some opening in the ranks of adult labour,
for which definite preparation has been made, and in which good character
may find reasonable prospects of permanent employment. Supervision,
training, the provision of a suitable opening--these must be regarded as
the three essentials of an apprenticeship system. How they may be assured
is, no doubt, a problem which invites controversy; that they ought to be
assured will be allowed by all.
Further, it is perhaps allowable to assume that an apprenticeship system
must not be regarded merely as a means of entering a skilled trade. We
must not think of it as an organization reserved for a comparatively small
section of the community: all must be brought within the sphere of its
influence. All boys alike need supervision; all boys alike require some
training; all boys alike should see before them, as manhood approaches,
the prospects of an opening in some form of occupation where diligence and
aptitude may receive its due reward. And all alike must one day play
their part in the complex life of the State. We want some to be skilled
workers; we want all to be intelligent and well-conducted citizens.
Apprenticeship, then, using the word in its widest sense, must be
universal. Here again, it is hoped, the reader may express his agreement.
In what follows an attempt is made to examine the old apprenticeship
system, to criticize apprenticeship as it exists to-day, and so to lead on
to proposals which will pave the way for the coming of the new and real
apprenticeship system of to-morrow. Throughout, the industrial
organization will be judged by bringing it to the test of the principles
just laid down. An apprenticeship system must be universal; it must make
proper provision for three essentials--supervision, training, opening.
Where these are wanting, in whole or in part, the youth of the nation
must, in a more or less degree, suffer irreparable loss.
CHAPTER II
THE OLD APPRENTICESHIP
Prior to the nineteenth century and the beginning of factory legislation
the conditions of boy labour were determined in and through the industrial
organization of the times. Of this organization, so far as the youthful
worker was concerned, the indentured apprenticeship system formed the most
characteristic feature. The history of the apprenticeship system falls
into three periods. In the first the gilds were the predominant factor; in
the second the State, by prescribing a seven years' apprenticeship,
insured the continuance of the system; in the third the industrial
revolution and the triumph of _laissez-faire_ ushered in the age of decay
and dissolution.
I.
THE AGE OF THE GILDS.
During the Early and Middle Ages the gilds constituted the central feature
of the industrial organization. The merchant gilds began to come into
existence in the second half of the eleventh century.[2] They were
societies formed for the purpose of obtaining the exclusive privilege of
carrying on trades. Later they became either identified with the municipal
body, or a specialized department of that authority. The craft gilds
appeared about a century later, and were associations of artisans engaged
in a particular industry. It is not necessary here to enter on a
discussion of the complex relations between these two kinds of gilds. The
subject is obscure, but, so far as concerns the regulation of boy labour,
the general facts are unquestioned.
Either by obtaining a royal charter of their own or by using the authority
of the municipality, the gilds were enabled to prescribe, down to the most
minute details, the conditions under which the trades of the district were
carried on. The control was essentially of a local character, varying from
place to place; it was, moreover, a control with, for all practical
purposes, the full force of the law at its back. "The towns and even the
villages had their gilds, and it is certain that these gilds were the
agencies by which the common interests of labour were protected." [3]
The gild organization included three classes of person--the apprentice,
the journeyman, and the master.
_The Apprentice._--The apprentice paid the master a premium, and was
indentured to him for a period of years, usually seven. He lived in his
master's house, and received from him, in addition to board and clothing,
wages on a low and rising scale. The master engaged to teach him his
trade, and the boy promised to serve his master honestly and obediently.
The following is a typical example of a fifteenth-century indenture:[4]
"This indenture made the xviii of September the year of the reign of King
Edward the iiiith the xxth between John Gare of Saint Mary Cray in the
county of Kent, cordwainer on that oon partie and Walter Byse, son of John
Byse sumtyme of Wimelton, in the same county, fuller on that other partie,
Witnesseth that the saide Walter hath covenanted with the saide John Gare
for the time of vii yeres, and that the saide John Gare shall find the
saide Walter mete and drink and clothing during the saide time as to the
saide Walter shall be according. Also the saide John Gare shall teche the
saide Walter his craft, as he may and can, and also the saide John Gare
shall give him the first yere of the said vii yeres iii{d} in money and
the second yere vi{d} and so after the rate of iii{d} to an yere, and the
last yere of the saide vii yeres the saide John Gare shall give unto the
said Walter x shillings of money. And the saide Walter shall will and
truly keep his occupacyon and do such things as the saide John shall bid
him do, as unto the saide Walter shall be lawful and lefull, and the saide
Walter shall be none ale goer neyther to no rebeld nor sporte during the
saide vii yeres without the licence of the saide John. In witness whereof
the parties aforesaide chaungeably have put their seales this daye and
yere abovesaide."
_The Journeyman._--At the expiration of the identureship the apprentice
became a journeyman. The change of status, beyond bringing with it a rise
in wages, made no great difference to the youth. He usually continued to
work for his master, and not infrequently remained a lodger in his house.
To some extent the master was still responsible for the good conduct of
his journeymen. Various regulations forbade the master to entice away the
journeymen of others and the journeymen to combine against the masters.
_The Master._--By a somewhat similar process of growth and without any
sudden break in social status, the journeyman became a master. Between
journeyman and master there were no class distinctions. Both worked at
their craft; and, in an age preceding the era of capitalistic production
on a large scale, the need of capital to start business on his own account
presented no difficulties which could not easily be overcome by any
intelligent journeyman.
Period of apprenticeship, hours and conditions of work, wages and
premiums, were all rigidly determined by the rules of the gild. Through
its officers the gild visited the workshops, inspected the articles in
process of manufacture, satisfied themselves as to their quality,
prescribed methods of production, were empowered to confiscate tools not
sanctioned by the regulations, and settled all disputes between the three
classes of persons concerned. Masters, journeymen, and apprentices alike
benefited by an organization which was created and controlled in their
common interests; while the general public were well served in the system
of expert inspection which guaranteed the quality of the goods supplied.
The gild, in short, was "the representation of the interests, not of one
class alone, but of the three distinct and somewhat antagonistic elements
of modern society--the capitalist _entrepreneur_, the manual worker, and
the consumer at large." [5]
From the point of view of the boy's training the system presented unique
advantages. To the age of twenty-one, and sometimes twenty-four, he was
under control. Living in the same house as his master, that control was
paternal in character, inspired by a living and individual interest in his
welfare. He received a thorough training in the trade to which he was
indentured. Finally, when apprenticeship was over, he found ready-made for
himself an opening that led upwards from the journeyman to the small
master. Under this system there was no boy his own master from an early
age, no master irresponsible for the conduct of his boys outside the
workshops, and no blind alley of boy employment that closed with boyhood
and ended in the sink of unskilled labour.
It its best days the gilds represented something more than a privileged
trade organization. The close connection between the gilds and the
municipality guarded the interests of the public. "The city authorities
looked to the wardens of each craft to keep the men under their charge in
order; and thus for every public scandal, or underhand attempt to cheat,
someone was responsible, and the responsibility could, generally speaking,
be brought home to the right person." [6] Further, there was no sharp
barrier between trade and trade. It is true that no one could enter a
trade without being apprenticed, but the person who had served his seven
years' apprenticeship in any one trade became free to follow all trades
within the city.[7] The gild system represented therefore something very
different from the individualist methods of modern times. There was in a
real sense, at any rate in each town, a trade organization under no
inconsiderable amount of collective control.
But the organization of the gild was suited only to the conditions of a
more or less primitive society. For a country rising rapidly to a front
place in the commercial world it was ill adapted. Increasing trade brought
wealth and a desire for wealth; and with wealth came power to those who
possessed it. The richer members of the gild gained the upper hand in the
administration of its affairs and oppressed the poorer.[8] The gild was no
longer an association of equals; and the weaker went to the wall.
Competition turned the methods of production in the direction of cheapness
rather than good quality; and the supervisory functions of the gild
disappeared. In general the whole system, rigid and inelastic, became a
heavy drag on the industrial organization. The members had paid for their
privileges in money and a long apprenticeship, and bitterly resented the
appearance of intruders not hall-marked by the gild. With shortsighted
policy, the gilds limited admissions by exacting high entrance-fees, and
strove to secure the maximum of benefits for the smallest possible number.
No longer an association of equals, united by common interests and a
common outlook; no longer a guarantee of excellence in matters of
craftmanship; no longer the guardian of the interests of the general
public, but a narrow sect claiming exclusive privileges--the gilds, rent
by strife and envy within, and regarded with open hostility by those
outside, drifted slowly towards that inevitable end which awaits those who
seek to sacrifice the needs of all on the altar of the selfish desires of
the few. "In the sixteenth century," says Dr. Cunningham, "the gilds had
in many cases so entirely lost their original character that they had not
only ceased to serve useful purposes, but their ill-judged interference
drove workmen to leave the towns and establish themselves in villages
where the gilds had no jurisdiction." [9] They received their death-blow in
the year 1547, through the legislation directed against the property of
the semi-religious bodies. With the decay of the gilds and their final
dissolution passed the ancient system which had for centuries regulated
the conditions of boy labour. So far as the boy was concerned the system
was founded on three principles: It recognized his need for prolonged
control and supervision, and made provision for the need by securing for
him, through his master, an interest at once individual and paternal. It
recognized the need for a thorough training in the mysteries of the craft;
and it recognized the need that, at the close of this training, the lad
should find opening out for him a career for which he had been specially
prepared. And it made provision for these needs by its scheme of
inspection and control carried on by those responsible for the common
interests of the trade. In short, the gild organization, in its earlier
and flourishing days, may justly be regarded as satisfying the conditions
of a true apprenticeship system.
II.
THE STATUTE OF APPRENTICES.
If the gild system was dead, the principles for which it stood and made
provision continued to be as important as ever. Nor under the industrial
conditions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did there appear to
be any practical difficulty in the way of enforcement. The small master
remained, and with him remained the possibility of an effective
apprenticeship system. Regulated by custom or by the municipal authority,
apprenticeship lost nothing of its old vitality. Indeed, with the increase
of trade and the increasing profits derived from trade, it became more
popular than ever. None the less, signs are not wanting that people were
conscious of faults in the industrial organization. Into the statute book
of the period creep frequent allusions to intruders who had entered the
trade other than through the door of apprenticeship. There was nothing new
in these complaints; they existed even in the best days of the gilds. "We
seem at a very early time," says Mrs. Green, "to detect behind the gild
system a growing class of 'uncovenanted labour,' which the policy of the
employers constantly tended to foster, their aim being on the one hand to
limit the number of privileged serving-men, and on the other to increase
the supply of uncovenanted labour." [10] But with the decay of the
supervisory functions of the gild these complaints became more frequent.
The condition of this "uncovenanted labour" has always been the unsolved
problem in any apprenticeship system. If uncovenanted labour is allowed to
enter a trade on the same terms as those who have served an
apprenticeship, the latter have clearly a grievance. They have paid for
their privilege in premium and long service at low wages, and not
unnaturally demand some assured recompense in return. If, on the other
hand, uncovenanted labour is rigidly excluded, there is no method of
rapidly increasing the supply of workers in times of expanding trade. From
this dilemma there is but one way of escape. All boys, irrespective of the
trades they follow, must pass through a system of apprenticeship before
they are permitted to earn the wages of a man. Two conditions are
necessary to success. First, all boys without exception must serve an
apprenticeship; secondly, having served this apprenticeship, they must not
in their employment be restricted to the trade to which they have been
indentured.
As already shown, the gilds, at any rate in certain districts, allowed a
person who had served an apprenticeship in one trade to be free of all the
trades of the town. The gilds satisfied the second condition, and in their
earlier days, when they included the majority of the population, they
satisfied to a large extent the second condition as well. To satisfy the
first condition was clearly, as will appear later, the intention of the
Statute of Apprentices.
But apart from the problem of uncovenanted labour, the disappearance of
the controlling influence of the gilds left many anomalies. Here
apprenticeship was regulated by custom, here by charter, and there left
undetermined. In one place a certain period of service was exacted, in
another place a different period. Finally, in the minds of the leaders of
the day there was firmly fixed the belief that, as trade was becoming the
life-blood of the nation, there was need of a general and consolidating
Act giving the force of law to what was often only a floating custom
applicable in a certain district.
In the reign of Elizabeth these growing feelings of discontent found voice
in an Act which marks an epoch in industrial legislation. It is usually
known as the Statute of Artificers and Apprentices. After reciting the
confusion that existed in previous legislation, the preamble continues:
"So if the substance of as many of the said Laws as are meet to be
continued shall be digested and reduced into one sole law and Statute, and
in the same an uniform Order prescribed and limited concerning the Wages
and other Orders for Apprentices, Servants and Labourers, there is good
hope that it will come to pass, that the same law (being duly executed)
should banish Idleness, advance Husbandry, and yield unto the hired
person, both in the time of Scarcity and in the time of Plenty, a
conventient Proportion of Wages." [11]
We are here concerned with the Act only so far as it affects the
conditions of boy labour. The principal regulations are the following:
"No person shall retain a servant in their services (_i.e._, in employment
for which apprenticeship was required) under one whole Year." [12]
Husbandmen may take apprentices "from the age of 10 until 21 at least," or
till twenty-four by agreement.[13] Householders in towns may "have and
retain the son of any Freeman not occupying Husbandry nor being a Labourer
... to serve and be bound as an Apprentice, after the Custom and Order of
the City of London, for seven years at the least so as the Term and years
of such Apprentice do not expire or determine after such Apprentice shall
be of the Age of twenty-four Years at the least." [14] "None may use any
manual occupacyon unless he hath been apprenticed to the same as
above." [15] "If a person be required by any Householder to be an
Apprentice and refuse he may be brought before a justice of the peace who
is empourred to commit him unto Ward, there to remain until he be
contented, and will be bounden to serve as an Apprentice should
serve." [16]
The Elizabethan Poor Law gave additional powers with regard to the
compulsory apprenticing of those likely to fall into evil ways, and made
it lawful for churchwardens and overseers "to bind any such children as
aforesaid to be Apprentices, when they shall see convenient, till such Man
child shall come to the age of four-and-twenty yeares." [17]
Taken together, these two Acts gave to public authorities large powers of
control over the growing boy. They did not, indeed, provide that everyone
should be apprenticed, but in the majority of occupations no one could be
employed unless he had served his time. Nor did they allow a person who
had been apprenticed to one trade to work at another. But they applied the
system of compulsory apprenticeship to all parts of the country, and they
made provision for the proper care, by way of apprenticeship, of neglected
children. People of the time were clearly of one mind in their desire to
supervise, through the State, the training of the youth. "Contemporary
opinion held that it was neither good for society nor trade that the young
man should enjoy any independence. 'Until a man grows unto the age of
xxiii yeares he for the moste parte, thoughe not alwayes, is wilde,
withoute Judgment, and not of sufficient experience to govern himself. Nor
(many tymes) grown unto the full or perfect knowledge of the arte or
occupation that he professed.'" [18]
As to the general effect of the far-reaching Statute of Apprentices, it is
not possible to do better than quote Dr. Cunningham: "A proof of the
wisdom of the measure seems to lie in the fact that we have no complaints
as to these restrictions in the Act or proposals for amending the clauses,
but that, on the contrary, there was, on more than one occasion, a demand
that it should be rigorously enforced, so that the industrial system of
the country should be really reduced to order." [19] For more than two
centuries, without amendment, the Act remained in force; and while it
lasted it provided at least the possibility for the adequate training and
supervision of the youth of the country.
These two centuries constitute the second stage in the history of boy
labour regulation. From a superficial point of view there appears no
essential difference between this period and the preceding. In the first
apprenticeship was enforced through the action of the gilds, in the second
by special legislative enactment. In either case apprenticeship was, for
all practical purposes, compulsory; but here the similarity ends.
Under the regime of the gilds apprenticeship was enforced, but in addition
its conditions were determined by a careful system of regulation. The
gild, an association representing the three classes concerned--masters,
journeymen, apprentices--supervised the industrial organization in the
interests of all alike. In the best days of the gilds the trade, as a
whole, inspected the workshops; the trade, as a whole, watched over the
training of the youth; the trade, as a whole, so fixed the number of those
entering, that at the conclusion of the apprenticeship there was room in
the ranks of the skilled artisan for those who had learned their craft.
During the disintegration of the gilds, this second factor gradually
disappeared. The Statute of Apprentices did indeed make apprenticeship
compulsory, but provided no efficient system of regulation. Measures were
frequently advocated and occasionally embodied in Acts for determining the
proportion of apprentices to journeymen, but never proved effective. We
see gradually emerging the struggle between the conflicting interests of
those engaged in production. A seven years' apprenticeship, enforced by
law, gave the employers a source of cheap labour, and we begin to hear
complaints that the number of apprentices was unduly multiplied and that
boys were taking the place of men. To what extent this practice prevailed
it is not easy to ascertain; but there is no question that, at any rate
among one class of apprentice--the pauper apprentice--abuses were grave
and frequent.
The whole story of the pauper apprentice forms an ugly episode in the
industrial history of the period. The Statute Book is punctuated with
frequent allusion to his unfortunate lot, coupled with proposals for
reform, for the most part ineffective. As already mentioned, the overseers
had large powers of compulsorily apprenticing the children of the poor. A
sum was paid to the employer, the lad handed over, and no steps taken to
guard his well-being or guarantee his training. It was inevitable that
under conditions such as these abuses should occur. The employer found
himself provided with a continual supply of lads, bound to serve him until
the age of twenty-one, or sometimes twenty-four; he was not troubled by
visits of inspectors; he could use them as he pleased. The luckless
apprentices were herded together in overcrowded and insanitary dwellings;
they were overworked and underfed; they learned no trade, and were
regarded as a cheap form of unskilled labour. If they misbehaved
themselves the justices of the peace would punish them; if they ran away
the law would see to it that they were returned to their masters; if they
complained of ill-treatment there was no one to substantiate the charge.
Whole trades seemed to have flourished by exploiting the parish
apprentices; and not infrequently the overseer, himself an employer, made
a comfortable profit out of their misfortunes.[20] In his "History of the
Poor Law" Sir G. Nicholls summarizes the legislation on the subject.[21]
With the rapid increase in the number of paupers at the close of the
eighteenth century these evils multiplied, and to an increasing extent
engaged the public attention.
If one class of apprentice was thus exploited, it is difficult to resist
the conclusion that, in a less degree, others suffered in a similar way.
Compulsory apprenticeship, without effective regulation, brought with it
the danger of compulsory servitude. The State was conscious of the danger,
and duties of supervision were laid on the justices of the peace. The
State was likewise conscious of the value of apprenticeship, and gave much
attention to the subject. A Commission of Charles I. dealt with the
problem, while an Act of James I. was concerned with the misuse of
apprenticeship charities, which led to children being brought up in
idleness, "to their utter overthrow and the great prejudice of the
commonwealth." [22] But legislation proved incapable of preventing evils
which increased rapidly as the years went by. From the standpoint of the
boy the second period, whose characteristic was compulsion without
supervision, was distinctly inferior to the first, when the gilds
regulated the affairs of the trade for the common good. But if the
apprenticeship system was weakening and abuses on the increase, an
effective training was always possible. The small master still remained,
there was still the call for the all-round craftsman, and the huge changes
in methods of production, that were destined to appear later, still lay in
the mists of the future.
III.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
It was the invention of the steam-engine and the consequent introduction
of machinery that ushered in the period of the industrial revolution. In
the trades affected the consequences were immediate, profound, and
disastrous for boys, journeymen, and small masters alike. "On the whole,
machinery rendered it possible in many departments of industry to
substitute unskilled for skilled labour." [23] In branches of certain
trades boys took the place of men. "Under the new conditions (of
calico-printing) boys could be employed in what had been hitherto the work
of men; so that, in the introduction of machinery, complaints began to be
made by the journeymen as to the undue multiplication of apprentices.
There was one shop in Lancashire where fifty-five apprentices had been
working at one time and only two journeymen; it was obvious that under
such circumstances the man who had served his time had very little hope of
obtaining employment." [24] A system of compulsory apprenticeship, under
such conditions, was exploited for the benefit of the employer, and led
inevitably to the injury of the boy. The latter was bound and could not
escape, while the former could readily find an excuse for discharging an
apprentice. Further, with the growing division of labour and the
separation of boys' work from men's work, training became less easy. The
boy was kept to a single operation, and when his time was up found no
further call for his services. The position of the workmen in the trade
appeared desperate. Owing to the competition of boys and the decrease in
the demand for his skill, wages were rapidly falling, and at the same time
the price of corn was rising by leaps and bounds. The small master, unable
to compete with the cheapness of the machine-made goods, fared as badly as
the journeyman. Both appealed to Parliament for redress, "usually
demanding the prohibition of the new machines, the enforcement of a seven
years' apprenticeship, or the maintenance of the old limitation of the
number of boys to be taught by each employer." [25]
But appeals of this kind fell on deaf ears. The spirit of the age was
against interference, and opposition to all form of regulation was rapidly
growing. The Statute of Apprentices was disliked by the large employers,
and an eager agitation began for its repeal. Though obsolescent, it was
still sufficiently alive to be troublesome. A seven years' apprenticeship,
it was argued, was unnecessarily long; weaving, for example, could be
learnt in two or three years. A Commission was appointed to consider the
question, and the large employers pointed out "that the new processes
could be learnt in a few months instead of seven years; and that the
restriction of the old master craftsman to two or three apprentices apiece
was out of the question with the new buyers of labour on a large
scale." [26] In the House of Commons "Mr. Sergeant Onslow urged the repeal
of the Act, and remarked that 'the reign of Elizabeth was not one in which
sound principles of commerce were known.' The true principles of commerce
(said another M.P.) appeared at that time to be misunderstood, and the Act
in question proved the truth of this assertion. The persons most competent
to form regulations with respect to trade were the master manufacturer,
whose interest it was to have goods of the best fabric, and no legislative
enactment could ever effect so much in producing that result as the merely
leaving things to their own courses and operations." [27] The skilled
craftsmen, on the other hand, petitioned in favour of compulsory
apprenticeship. But in the growing enthusiasm for the theory whose sole
tenet lay in the belief that the haven of prosperity lay in the mid-ocean
of uncontrolled liberty, all pleas in favour of regulation were treated
with contempt. The famous Chalmers, speaking of the Statute of
Apprentices, declared that "this law, so far as it requires
apprenticeship, ought to be repealed, because its tendency is to abolish
and to prevent competition among workmen." [28]
In the year 1814 the Statute of Apprentices was repealed;[29] and with its
repeal the State washed its hands of all responsibility for the well-being
of the youth of the land. Henceforth things were to be left "to their own
courses and operations." It is no doubt true that there remained the
"Health and Morals of Apprentices Act," passed in 1802; this Act
prescribed certain conditions as to hours of work and sanitation. But the
Act in itself was utterly "ineffective," [30] and for all practical
purposes employers were unfettered in their use or misuse of children.
There remained one more blow to be struck before the condition of the boy
touched the lowest level of misery reached in the whole history of this
country; and it was soon struck with that relentless vigour which marked
the actions of the reformer in those times.
After the repeal of the Statute of Apprentices there was for the lad no
sort of legal guarantee of training, no kind of State supervision over his
conduct; he could work how and when it pleased him or his parents. But the
Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 made it necessary for him to work how and
when it pleased his employer, and took from him all possibility of
effective choice. This Act abolished the allowance system in aid of wages.
Salutary and even necessary as some reform of the kind was, in the
particular way in which it was carried out it fell with crushing force on
the unfortunate children. Hitherto parents could receive so much per child
out of the rates; from henceforth this was to be illegal. Wages indeed
rose, but rose slowly and in patches. The earnings of the child were
required to make existence even possible for the family. A foreign and
impartial student of English affairs has made this truth abundantly clear:
"Even granted that the labourer himself now needed no allowance, what had
he in place of the allowance for his family and the out-of-work relief?
Something in place of these he must have, for even labourers' families
must live.... What was the way out? The labourer must sell more labour
power; and since his own was already sold, he must put that of his family
upon the market. This was how the problem of the married man was
solved.... We have already seen that the expansion of the gang system took
place mainly after 1834; it appears that the exploitation of child-labour
and women's labour is the main characteristic of the period between the
Poor Law and the Education Acts. When Dr. Kay was examined before the
Lords' Committee on the Poor Law Amendment Act, he described the
astonishment of travellers at the number of women and children working in
the fields, and traced their increased employment to the Poor Law. In his
own words: 'The extent of employment for women and children has most
wonderfully increased since the Poor Law came into operation. It has had
that effect by rendering it necessary that the children should be so
employed in order to adjust the wages to the wants of the family....' And
a country clergyman gave expression to similar views in 1843: 'By these
allowances their children were not then obliged, as now, to work for their
subsistence. Their time was at their own disposal; and then they were
sent more regularly to the schools. But since the new Poor Law this has
been reversed.'" [31]
Those persons who nowadays talk genially of the ease with which the new
Poor Law was enforced, would do well to remember that the ease was
purchased at the high price of the physical and moral deterioration of the
children. Chalmers had got his way, there was now free competition among
the workmen; and free competition among the workmen meant then, as it has
always meant since, the unregulated slavery of the weak.
With the repeal of the Statute of Apprentices and the passing of the Poor
Law Amendment Act, the old apprenticeship system came to an end. No longer
capable of being controlled in the common interests of the trade and the
community, no longer capable of being enforced by statutory enactment, the
apprenticeship system in its ancient form, though it might linger among
certain industries, was destined slowly to disappear. We may regret its
disappearance, as the vanishing of a fragment of an old-world life; but
repinings are idle unless directed toward the search for some substitute
adequate to the needs of the present.
CHAPTER III
THE AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION
The last chapter closed on the darkest scene in the long history of child
labour in this country. Of the three factors essential to a true
apprenticeship, not one was found or its need even recognized in the wild
riot of the industrial revolution. Of public or organized supervision of
the youth of the land there was not a trace. The controlling influence of
the gild system had long since disappeared; the powers of regulation that
lay in the Statute of Apprentices and the Elizabethan Poor Law had been
withdrawn; free and unrestricted traffic in the use of children was the
watchword of the age. Babies of four and five years worked alongside the
adult and for the same number of hours; there were persons of intelligence
who saw in this gain extracted from infants not the least of the triumphs
of the day. Children's lives were often a mere alternation of two kinds of
darkness--the darkness of night giving place to the darkness of the mine.
Boys and girls were hired out in troops to a taskmaster, herded in barns
regardless of the claims of health and decency, and driven in gangs into
the fields of the farmer. Whether in the mine or the factory or on the
farm, the present profits of the employer, and not the future welfare of
the race, were alone considered. Industrial training throughout the new
manufacturing districts was treated with open contempt. A person, the
masters urged, could learn the trade in a few months; while as for the
provision of an opening that would lead from the work of the youth to the
work of the adult, it was not to be imagined that a subject of this
complexity should receive attention at a time when the narrow circuit of
the prosperous factory set a limit to the horizon of men's thoughts. In
short, over the whole field of industry the desire for immediate success
dominated the larger, but more remote, interests of the future.
What was most significant of the times was not the flood of misery that
swept over the country so much as the spirit of complacent satisfaction
with which it was regarded. That the industrial revolution was in the
cause of progress, the reform of the Poor Law essential, and the decay of
the old apprenticeship system inevitable, men of intelligence could not
fail to recognize; but they might also have recognized that the profound
transformation of the whole social and industrial structure involved could
not take place without widespread suffering and demoralization. Men of the
day did see these things, but saw them with unconcern. Progress involved
change, and change demanded its toll of pain; but it was not the duty of
the State to ease the passage or to yield to the outcry of what they
looked on as the silly sentimentalist.
The general view of contemporary opinion finds itself reflected in the
Whig and Radical journals. In 1819 the _Edinburgh Review_ declared: "After
all, we must own that it was quite right to throw out the Bill for
prohibiting the sweeping of chimneys by boys--because humanity is a modern
invention; and there are many chimneys in old houses that cannot possibly
be swept in any other manner;" while the Radical paper, the _Gorgon_, was
also inclined to sneer at the House of Commons for "its ostentatious
display of humanity in dealing with trivialities like the slave trade,
climbing-boys, and the condition of children in factories." [32] The above
represents the orthodox opinion of the time. The age was the age of the
triumph of the individualist. His was the gospel that inspired the
economist; his were the maxims which guided the legislator; his were the
principles that were realized in the practice of the manufacturer. For one
brief moment in the history of the world's progress the individualist was
supreme; and then the world reeled back in horror from the hell of sin and
misery he had created. Even in the early days there were not wanting
voices to protest against the theory that in the balance-sheet of the
trader was to be found the final test of national righteousness. As far
back as the year 1801 Mr. Justice Grose, in sentencing an employer for
overworking and maltreating an apprentice, declared: "Should the
manufacturers insist that without these children they could not
advantageously follow their trade, and the overseers say that without
such opportunity they could not get rid of these children, he should say
to the one, that trade must not for the thirst of lucre be followed, but
at once, for the sake of society, be abandoned; and to the other, it is a
crime to put out these children, who have no friend to see justice done,
to incur deformity and promote consumption or other disease. This
obviously leads to their destruction--not to their support." [33] And in
the year 1802 was passed the "Health and Morals of Apprentices Act," an
Act important not for its results, which were insignificant, but as a
protest against the gospel of individualism, and as the first of the long
series of Factory Acts which heralded the dawn of a new age.
This new age, which reaches down to the present time, and of which the end
is not yet, was an age of reconstruction. It represented an attempt,
unconscious for the most part, to reinstate in a changed form the
principles which underlay the old apprenticeship system. It is true that
throughout the whole period indentured apprenticeship was in process of
gradual decay, and is now become almost a negligible factor in the
industrial world; but it is no less true that from its ruins was slowly
rising an organization destined to prove a fitting and even a superior
substitute. The final stage of development lies still in the future; the
adjustments required to meet the complex needs of modern industry are
innumerable; and we are only beginning to see the outlines of a new
apprenticeship system towards which we have been drifting for nearly a
century. To tell in detail the history of these long years of slow
progress would be foreign to the purpose of this book; but certain
characteristics, which mark the process of change, are sufficiently
germane to the discussions of to-day to justify consideration.
In the first place, the forces which repeatedly faced and beat down the
resistance of those who stood for unregulated industry were not the forces
of economic analysis; few forces that make for great changes are the
product of such unimpassioned reason. Factory and kindred legislation were
throughout the triumph of sentiment, and not the victory of logic. During
the course of the nineteenth century men became slowly more sensitive to
the fact of suffering, less tolerant of its continued existence. The
Liberal essayist was historically correct when he said contemptuously that
humanity was a modern invention. In earlier days little heed was paid to
the physical well-being of the individual journeyman or apprentice. If the
gilds forbade the carrying on of a craft by night, it was because the dim
gloom of ancient illuminants meant bad work, and not because protracted
toil made unhealthy workmen. When the State concerned itself with hours of
employment, it was to prescribe a minimum, and not to fix a maximum; to
keep a man busy, and therefore out of mischief, was deemed more important
than to allow him leisure for thought or recreation.
In this new sentiment of humanity lay the motive power which drove
Parliament on to spasmodic acts of factory legislation. The sentiment was
at once a source of weakness and a source of strength. It was a source of
weakness because sentiment is essentially local in its sphere of
influence. It does not search out the objects on which its favours are
lavished; they must be brought by others to its very doors and repeatedly
thrust over the threshold till entrance is forced. It lacks the breadth,
the insight, and the calm of that imaginative reason which is now slowly
taking its place. In the case of suffering, for example, it troubles
itself not at all about the more remote causes of suffering or the more
remote sufferer, but surges round some particular sufferer or some
particular grievance, existing here and now.[34] Sentiment, at any rate
the British type of sentiment, is not touched by abstractions; visions of
humanity in the throes of travail leave it unmoved; appeals to the
ultimate principles of justice fail to produce even a throb of sympathetic
interest; it is only the concrete--the oppressed child or the widowed
mother--that lets loose the flood. For the more profound solution of
social problems such sentiment is useless, but for the attack of specific
evils, especially where the opposition is well organized, it displays
amazing stubbornness and resource. Its strength lies in its unreason;
argument is of no avail; here are certain cases of suffering it will not
tolerate; a remedy must be found and Parliament must find it; there will
be no peace until something is done.
It was in this way that regulation of child labour began, and indeed has
continued down to the present time. The result is patchy, and the removal
of evils partial and unsystematic. There has been, for example, no serious
attempt made to set up a minimum standard of conditions under which alone
children shall be employed; least of all has the State endeavoured to
formulate a new apprenticeship system, adapted to the needs of modern
industry. Much indeed has been done in both directions; but much more
remains for the future to carry through before we can hope to read in the
efficiency of the race the sign-mark of our success. The first
characteristic, then, of the age of reconstruction is to be found in the
predominating influence of sentiment.
The second characteristic is seen in the triumph of the idealist over the
combined forces of the doctrinaire and the practical man. Every proposal
for regulating child labour was fought on the same lines; there were the
same arguments and the same replies. The individualist urged that State
interference was in itself an evil, that, though the consequences might be
delayed and the immediate effect even beneficial, you might rest assured
that in the long-run your sin would find you out. The wealthy citizen
declared that if boys might not climb his chimneys, his chimneys must go
unswept; the manufacturer predicted certain ruin to his trade if he were
forbidden to use children as seemed best to him; while all united in
urging that if the children were not at work they would be doing something
worse, and pointed out the obvious cruelty of depriving half-starved
parents of the scanty earnings of their half-starved offspring.
To all these and similar objections the idealist, with his clearer vision
of the reality of things, and firm in his faith that the prosperity of a
people could never be the final outcome of allowing an obvious wrong, made
response. He sympathized with the individualist for the dreary pessimism
of a creed which could see the future alone coloured with hope if heralded
by the sobs of suffering children. The wealthy citizen he bade roughly
burn his house and build another sooner than sacrifice the lives of boys
to the needs of his chimneys. While as for the manufacturer, he told him,
as Mr. Justice Grose had told him earlier, that, if his engines needed
children as fuel, his was a trade the country was best rid of. To those
employers who pleaded the small wages of the parents he suggested the grim
and crude and obvious remedy of paying those parents more. And the
idealist, with the sentiment of the British public to back him, won the
day.
But if sentiment gave the idealist his victory, it was the future that
brought him a full justification. His sin after many years is yet seeking
him; the wealthy citizen found other and innocent means of cleansing his
chimneys; the manufacturer placidly adapted himself to the new conditions,
and his trade flourished exceedingly; the wages of parents rose rapidly,
and what small measure of health and happiness that has come to the
children of the poor during the last century has come to them through the
defeat and the defiance of the individualist.
A hundred years have rolled by, and yet to all new regulation the same old
objections are raised by the individualist. But his day is gone, and with
his day he also is going. A few, indeed, are left, interesting survivals
of the early Victorian age. But for the great majority of the population
regulation has no fears; they welcome and invite it. And, further, not
only are they willing to forbid unsatisfactory conditions of employment,
they are also ready to spend public money to secure a proper environment
and a suitable training for children. What they will not tolerate is the
continued existence of unnecessary suffering; and they are coming more and
more to realize that a vast mass of the suffering of to-day is
unnecessary. Principles, even though openly professed, will not look
suffering in the face and pass on.[35] Humanity is no longer a modern
invention, it has become the guiding spirit of the age.
Thus we can face the morning of the twentieth century in a spirit of hope.
We may look for more consistent support and less strenuous opposition than
in the past. We may in consequence think out and introduce schemes of a
more far-reaching character. Empirical patching will give place to
reconstruction on a large scale. In other words, the sentiment of the
nineteenth century, wayward and uncertain in its method of action, and at
its best troubling itself about a remedy for actual suffering, will be
superseded by the imaginative reason of the twentieth, which looks rather
to prevention than to cure.
CHAPTER IV
THE GUARDIANSHIP OF THE STATE
The age of reconstruction is not complete, and for the moment we are left
with the products of sentiment as revealed in the tangled and piecemeal
legislation respecting boy labour. Before making new proposals, it is
desirable to survey the existing laws on the subject, in order to discover
to what extent the State acts as the guardian of the child by making
provision for the three essential factors of a true apprenticeship
system--supervision, training, opening. The present chapter will be
concerned with a description of the statutory machinery; in the next the
value of the machinery will be tested by examining its results in actual
experience.
I.
STATE SUPERVISION.
Supervision is the first essential of an apprenticeship system. A boy must
remain under adequate control, as regards his conduct and physical
development, until the age of eighteen is reached; before then he is too
young to be allowed safely to become his own master. What part does the
State, as guardian, play in this work of supervision? This volume is
concerned with the answer to the question only so far as that answer has a
direct bearing on the general problem of boy labour. A statement, for
example, of the criminal law, of the law relating to public health, or of
the poor law, lies outside its scope.
The guardianship of the State, in respect of supervision, is of two kinds.
On the one hand the State appears as the guardian of the boy by
restricting his employment, or by forbidding it under certain specified
unfavourable conditions--State regulation; on the other hand--as, for
example, in its system of education--it assumes a more active role, and
itself provides for the boy some of the discipline and training he
requires--State enterprise.
Sec. 1. STATE REGULATION.
The State, by regulation, may protect the boy in three ways--
1. _Prohibition._--The State may protect the boy by forbidding his
employment below a certain age or in certain classes of industry.
2. _Limitation of Hours._--The State may protect the boy by fixing a limit
to the number of hours during which he may be employed.
3. _Health and Safety._--The State may protect the boy by enforcing
certain regulations as regards sanitation in the workshop or the proper
guarding of machinery, or may require a medical certificate to show that
the boy is physically fit for the occupation in which he is engaged.
We shall best understand the measure of protection afforded the boy by the
State by classifying the statutory regulations under these three headings
rather than by taking the individual Acts and analyzing them separately.
The principal Acts concerned are the following:
The Factory and Workshop Act, 1901.
Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, 1872.
Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887.
Mines (Prohibition of Child Labour Underground) Act, 1900.
The Shop Hours Act, 1892.
The Employment of Children Act, 1903.
The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1894.
Children Act, 1908.
And the various Acts relating to compulsory attendance at school--
Elementary Education Act, 1876.
Elementary Education Act, 1880.
Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act, 1893.
And the Act amending this last Act, 1899.
To make what follows clearer, and to avoid repetition, it is desirable to
add a few remarks about two of these Acts.
The Factory and Workshop Act is concerned with the conditions of
employment in premises "wherein labour is exercised by way of trade or for
purposes of gain in or incidental to any of the following
purposes--namely:
"(i.) The making of an article or part of any article; or
"(ii.) The altering, repairing, ornamenting, or finishing of any
article; or
"(iii.) The adapting for sale of an article." [36]
Premises in which such operations are carried on are divided into these
four classes:
1. _Textile factories_, where mechanical power is used in connection with
the manufacture of cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, or other
like material;
2. _Non-textile factories_, where mechanical power is used in connection
with the manufacture of articles other than those included in (1), and, in
addition, certain industries, such as "print works," or lucifer-match
works, whether mechanical power is or is not employed;[37]
3. _Workshops_ where articles are manufactured without the aid of
mechanical power; and--
4. _Domestic workshops or factories_, where a private house or room is, by
reason of the work carried on there, a factory or a workshop, where
mechanical power is not used, and in which the only persons employed are
members of the same family dwelling there.[37]
The Act also has a limited reference to laundries, docks, buildings in
course of construction and repair, and railways.[39]
Certain definitions are important in the interpretation of the
regulations. The expression "child" means a person under the age of
fourteen, who is not exempt from attendance at school.[40] The expression
"young person" means a person who has ceased to be a child, and is under
the age of eighteen.[41] These expressions will be used with this
significance in the remainder of this chapter, unless the contrary is
stated.
The authority for the enforcement of the Factory and Workshop Act is in
general the Home Office, acting through its inspectors. In certain cases,
which will be mentioned later, the duty of enforcement is imposed on one
or other of the locally elected bodies.
The regulations comprised in the Employment of Children Act are in part of
general application, in part dependent on by-laws made by the local
authority, and approved by the Home Secretary. The local authority, for
the enforcement of the Act and for the making of by-laws, is, in the case
of London, exclusive of the City, for which the Common Council is the
authority, the London County Council; in the case of a municipal borough
with a population according to the census of 1901 of over 10,000, the
Borough Council; in the case of any other urban district with a population
of over 20,000, the District Council; in the case of the remainder of
England and Wales, the County Council.[42]
These are the chief Acts through which are regulated the conditions of boy
labour. Each in a more or less degree is concerned with prohibition,
limitation of hours, and health regulations. It now remains to examine the
extent of the protection provided.
_(a) Prohibition of Employment._
There is no law forbidding children below a certain age to work for wages.
In default of local by-laws, it is still legal to employ children of any
age, however young, in a large number of occupations. Prohibition takes
the form of forbidding the employment of children in certain trades
regarded as specially dangerous to health or demoralizing to character.
1. It is illegal to employ children or young persons "in the part of a
factory or workshop in which there is carried on the process of silvering
mirrors by the mercurial process or the process of making white lead." [43]
And the Secretary of State has power to extend this prohibition to other
dangerous trades.[44]
2. It is illegal to employ underground in any mine boys under the age of
thirteen,[45] and no boy under the age of twelve may be employed
above-ground in connection with any mine.[46]
3. A child may not be employed "in the part of a factory or workshop in
which there is carried on any grinding in the metal trade, or the dipping
of lucifer-matches." [47]
4. A child under the age of eleven may not be employed in
street-trading--_i.e._, in "the hawking of newspapers, matches, flowers,
and other articles, playing, singing, or performing for profit,
shoe-blacking, or any like occupation carried on in streets or public
places." [48]
5. In theatres and shows, children under seven may not be employed at all,
and children under eleven can only be employed on a licence granted by a
magistrate.[49]
Omitting ways of earning money, as by begging, which cannot properly be
regarded as forms of employment, and ancient Acts, such as the Chimney
Sweepers Act of 1840, which prohibited the apprenticing of children under
the age of sixteen to the trade of the sweep, or the Agricultural Gangs
Act, 1867, which forbade the employment of children under eight in an
agricultural gang--Acts which have now little practical importance--the
regulations outlined above comprise the whole of the regulations which
prohibit throughout the country the employment of boys in certain forms of
occupation. For any extension of prohibition we must look to the by-laws
which may, but need not, be made by local authorities under the provisions
of the Employment of Children Act.
Under this Act the local authority may make by-laws prescribing for all
children below the age which employment is illegal, and may prohibit
absolutely, or may permit, subject to conditions, the employment of
children under the age of fourteen in any specified occupation.[50] The
by-laws may likewise prohibit or allow, under conditions, "street trading"
by persons under the age of sixteen.[51] But in either case the by-laws,
before becoming operative, must be confirmed, after an inquiry is held, by
the Home Secretary.[52]
As an example of prohibition through by-laws made under this Act, the case
of London outside the City may be cited. The by-laws of the London County
Council forbid the employment of all children under the age of eleven, the
employment of children under the age of fourteen as "lather boys" in
barbers' shops, and the employment of boys under the age of sixteen in
"street trading," unless they wear on the arm a badge provided by the
Council.
_(b) Limitation of Hours._
There is no law limiting for all children or for all young persons the
number of hours which may be worked. It is still legal in the majority of
occupations to employ young persons, and in default of by-laws
school-children on days when the schools are closed, for a number of
hours restricted only by the length of the day. As with prohibition, so
the matter stands with the limitation of hours. Glaring evils, just
because they glared, have from time to time been dealt with by
legislation; other evils no less serious have been ignored merely because
they have not chanced to attract attention. The result of this piecemeal
legislation and enactment by by-laws is a chaos of intricate regulations,
applicable to persons of different age and different sex, varying from
trade to trade and from place to place. I am, fortunately, concerned here
only with the male sex, and shall begin with the boy young person, and
then proceed to the boy child.
_The Young Person._--Far the most important, because the most detailed and
the most comprehensive, of the Acts dealing with the limitation of hours
is the Factory and Workshops Act. Under this Act the hours of employment
are restricted by specifying the hours during which alone employment may
be carried on. No employment is allowed on Sundays except in the case of
Jewish factories closed on Saturday, or of certain industries specially
sanctioned for the purpose by the Home Secretary.
In textile factories,[53] the period of employment for young persons is
from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with two hours for meals,
and on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., with half an hour for
meals.[54] In non-textile factories and workshops the chief difference
lies in the fact that the interval for meals is half an hour shorter,
while on Saturdays employment is permitted between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., with
half an hour for meals.[55] In domestic factories and workshops the hours
of employment are from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with four and a half hours for
meals, and on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., with two and a half hours
for meals.[56]
Overtime is in general prohibited.[57] Employment inside and outside a
factory or workshop in the business of the factory or workshop is
prohibited, except during the recognized period, on any day on which the
young person is employed inside the factory or workshop both before and
after the dinner-hour.[58] Thus the maximum number of hours in a week,
including meal-times, during which a young person may be employed is, in
textile factories, 65-1/2; in non-textile factories and workshops, 68; in
domestic factories and workshops, 85; or, excluding meal-times, the hours
in the three classes are 55, 60, and 60 respectively.
The Act applies only to those employed in factories and workshops. It has
limited application to certain other trades, but the application is
unimportant in connection with boy labour. To the regulations quoted there
are numerous exceptions, and the Home Secretary has large discretionary
powers.[59]
A young person may not be employed "in or about a shop" for a longer
period than seventy-four hours, including meal-times, in any one week.
Further, an employer may not knowingly employ a young person who has
already on the same day been employed in a factory or workshop, if such
employment makes the total number of hours worked more than the full time
a young person is permitted to work in a factory or workshop.[60]
By-laws may be made limiting the hours of employment of young persons
under the age of sixteen engaged in "street trading." [61] The by-laws of
the London County Council forbid the employment of such persons "before 7
a.m. or after 9 p.m., or for more than eight hours in any day, when
employed under the immediate direction and supervision of an adult person
having charge of a street stall or barrow; before 7 a.m. or after 8 p.m.
when employed in any other form of street trading."
With the exception of the regulations outlined above, there is no limit to
the number of hours during which young persons may legally be employed.
_Children._--The most important Acts regulating the hours of employment
for children are the Acts which enforce attendance at school. They limit
hours, not by fixing a maximum number of hours during which children may
be employed, but by pursuing the far more effective plan of seeing that
the children are in school, and therefore not in the workshop, during part
of the day.
Taken together, these Acts provide that children shall be at school, and
consequently not at work, at all times when the schools are opened until
the age of twelve is reached. There is one exception to this regulation:
children may, under a special by-law of the local education authority, be
employed in agriculture at the age of eleven, provided that they attend
school 250 times a year up to the age of thirteen. This exception is of
small importance, as "the number of children who are exempt under this
special by-law seems to be very small, not exceeding apparently 400 in the
whole country." [62]
Between the ages of twelve and fourteen attendance is compulsory, subject
to a complex scheme of partial or total exemptions, depending on the
by-laws of the local education authority. It rests, for instance, with
each local education authority to decide "whether, as regards children
between twelve and fourteen, they will grant full-time or half-time
exemption, or both, and upon what conditions of attendance or attainments,
always subject, of course, to the fact that the by-laws must be approved
by the Board of Education, and must not clash with any Act regulating the
employment of children." [63] For all practical purposes, it is possible
for the local education authority, if they think fit, to insist on such a
standard of attainment to be reached before exemption is allowed that,
with a few exceptions, relatively insignificant, children are compelled to
attend school until the age of fourteen. It is important to remember that
these Acts limit the employment of children only during times when the
schools are opened. As a general rule, the hours of attendance are
between 9 and 12 in the morning, and between 2 and 4.30 in the afternoon;
while the schools are open on five days a week during some forty-four
weeks in the year. During holidays, and on Saturdays and Sundays, so far
as these Acts are concerned, there is no limit to the numbers of hours a
child may work.
A further limit is put on the hours children may work by the Employment of
Children Act, 1903. A child under fourteen may not be employed between 9
p.m. and 6 a.m. This provision is subject to variation by local
by-laws.[64] Local by-laws may prescribe for children under fourteen:
(_a_) The hours between which employment is illegal; (_b_) the number of
daily and weekly hours beyond which employment is illegal; and (_c_) may
permit, subject to conditions, the employment of children in any specified
occupation.[65]
Under this Act the by-laws of the London County Council provide that a
child liable to attend school shall not be employed on days when the
school is open for more than three and a half hours a day, nor--
(_a_) Between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.;
(_b_) Before 6.30 a.m. or after 9 p.m.;
and on days when the school is not open--
(_a_) Before 6.30 a.m. or after 9 p.m.;
(_b_) For more than eight hours in any one day.
On Sundays a child shall not be employed except between the hours of 7
a.m. and 1 p.m. for a period not exceeding three hours. A child liable to
attend school shall not be employed for more than twenty hours in any week
when the school is open on more than two days, or for more than thirty
hours in any week when the school is open on two days only or less.
Additional limitations are imposed on the number of hours during which
children may be employed by the Factory and Workshop Act. A child between
"twelve and thirteen, who has reached the standard for total or partial
exemption under the Elementary Education Acts, and consequently may be
employed, must still, if employed in a factory or workshop, attend school
in accordance with the requirements of the Factory Act. So must a child of
thirteen who has not obtained a certificate entitling him to be employed
as a young person." [66] The famous half-time system is not, as sometimes
supposed, a special privilege allowed to workshops and factories. It is
permissible in all forms of occupation in a practically unrestricted
shape. In factories and workshops the conditions are subject to definite
regulations. It is, however, only in factories and workshops, and, indeed,
only in certain trades among these, that the half-time system has much
practical importance. The general regulations, subject, however, to
certain variations, are as follows:[67] Employment must be either in
morning and afternoon sets, or on alternate days The morning set begins
at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., and ends--
(_a_) At one o'clock in the afternoon; or
(_b_) If the dinner-hour begins before one o'clock, at the beginning
of dinner-time; or
(_c_) If the dinner-time does not begin before 2 p.m. at noon.
The afternoon set begins either--
(_a_) At 1 p.m.
(_b_) At any later hour at which the dinner-time terminates; or
(_c_) If the dinner-hour does not begin before 2 p.m., and the morning
set ends at noon, at noon--
and ends at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.
On Saturdays the period of employment is the same as for young persons--6
a.m. to 11.30 a.m.--but a child shall not be employed on two successive
Saturdays, nor on Saturday in any week if on any other days in the same
week his period of employment has exceeded five and a half hours.
A child must not be employed in two successive periods of seven days in
the morning set, nor in two successive periods of seven days in an
afternoon set.
On the alternate day system, the period of employment is the same as for a
young person--_i.e._, from 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., with two
hours for meals; and on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., with half an
hour for meals. Under this system a child may not be employed on two
successive days, nor on the same day in two successive weeks.
Under all the systems a child may not be employed continuously for more
than four and a half hours without an interval of half an hour for
meals.[68] Nor must a child be employed on any one day on the business of
the factory or workshops both inside and outside the factory or
workshop.[69]
This system of regulation refers to textile factories, but these include
the vast majority of half-timers. The regulations with regard to
non-textile factories and workshops are less rigorous; and in the case of
domestic workshops and factories there is additional relaxation of the
rules.
The parent or guardian of the half-timer is responsible for the child's
attendance at school. As an additional precaution against truancy, the
employer may not employ the child unless each Monday the child has
obtained from the school a certificate of attendance during the past
week.[70]
If we take into account the hours worked in the factory and the hours
spent in school, we shall find that the half-timer's week of strenuous
effort is a long and a weary one. "Taking one week with another, the
employment of the half-timer is for twenty-eight and a quarter hours a
week in a textile factory, and thirty in a non-textile factory or
workshop; and as he is in school for thirteen or fourteen hours, his total
week in school and factory is from forty to forty-four hours." [71]
In view of proposals made later, I have thought desirable to insert in
detail the half-time regulations, in order to show how, in the actual
carrying out of industrial operations, a half-time system can be put into
effect.
_(c) Protection of Health._
There is no law prescribing in all cases the conditions as to buildings,
sanitary arrangements, and safety, under which alone children and young
persons may be employed. There is no law requiring in all cases a medical
certificate from children and young persons to show that they are
physically suited for the employment in which they are engaged.
It is no doubt true that the buildings in which juveniles are employed
come, in respect of sanitation, drainage, and water-supply, under the
general Public Health Acts. It is no doubt a fact that local building
by-laws occasionally insist on means of escape in case of fire in premises
where more than a certain number of persons are employed. It is likewise
part of the law of the land that, if a lad in the course of his work meets
with a fatal accident, twelve just men and a coroner must sit on the dead
body and investigate the cause.
But, apart from such regulations, which are not confined to the employment
of juveniles, or, indeed, to employment generally, it is only in special
forms of occupation that there are required additional precautions
designed to protect the health and safety of the workers. Elaborate rules
prescribe the conditions which must be observed in the management of a
railway or a mine. The Shop Hours Act requires that seats should be
provided for shop assistants. Such Acts have in practice only a limited
application in the case of children and young persons, who do not to any
large extent come into the classes affected.
Here, as in regard to the regulation of hours, the chief Act of importance
is the Factory and Workshop Act. This Act makes careful provision, so far
as premises are concerned, for the health of the workers, juveniles and
adults alike. Whether the provisions are in practice always enforced is a
matter open to some doubt.
In the case of factories,[72] the outside walls, ceilings, passages, and
staircases must be painted every seven years, and washed every fourteen
months; and in general the premises must be kept clean and free from
effluvia, and the floors properly drained. Ventilation must be adequate,
and all gases, dust, and other impurities generated in the course of work
rendered, so far as is practicable, innocuous to health. In certain cases
the inspector may insist on the provision of ventilating fans.
Overcrowding is prevented by requiring a minimum space in each room of 250
cubic feet for each person, or during overtime of 400 cubic feet. A
reasonable temperature must be maintained in each room in which any person
is employed. There must be sufficient and suitable supply of sanitary
conveniences. In textile factories a limit is set on the amount of
atmospheric humidity. In certain dangerous or poisonous trades additional
precautions are required. The Secretary of State has large powers of
imposing additional regulations on the one hand, and of granting
exemptions on the other. The authority for enforcing the regulations in
factories is the inspector acting through the Home Office.
The regulations applicable to workshops do not differ very materially from
those imposed on factories, but the enforcing authority is different. The
authority in the case of workshops is the district or the borough
council--_i.e._, the public health authority. The medical officer of
health and the inspector of nuisances have for this purpose the power of
factory inspectors. A breach of the law on the subject is declared to be a
nuisance, and may be dealt with summarily under the Public Health Acts.
The district or borough council are compelled to keep a register of the
workshops within their area; and the medical officer of health is required
to report annually to the council on the administration of the Factory
Acts in the workshops and workplaces in the district. A copy of this
report must be sent to the Secretary of State, who remains the supreme
authority, and in certain cases of default may authorize a factory
inspector to take the necessary steps for enforcing these provisions, and
recover the expenses from the defaulting council.
An attempt is also made to regulate the sanitary conditions under which
out-workers are employed. Where provisions are made by the Secretary of
State, the employers concerned are made responsible for the condition of
the places in which his out-workers carry on work. The employer must keep
lists of out-workers. The district council, in cases where the place is
injurious to the health of the out-workers, may take steps to have the
evil remedied or the employment stopped.
The Act requires machinery to be properly fenced, and special precautions
to be taken in cleaning machinery in motion. Children may not clean any
part of machinery in motion, or any place under such machinery other than
a overhead gearing. Children and young persons may not be allowed to work
between the fixed and traversing parts of a self-acting machine while the
machine is in motion.
When there occurs in a factory or workshop any accident which either (_a_)
causes loss of life to a person employed in the factory or workshop, or
(_b_) causes to a person employed in the factory or workshop such bodily
injury as to prevent him on any one of the three working days after the
occurrence of the accident from being employed for five hours on his
ordinary work, written notice shall forthwith be sent to the inspector for
the district.
In the case of new factories erected since January 1, 1892, and of new
workshops erected since January 1, 1896, in which more than forty persons
are employed, a certificate must be obtained from the local authority for
building by-laws, stating that reasonable provision for escape has been
made in case of fire. With regard to older factories and workshops, the
local authority must satisfy itself that reasonable means of escape are
provided. From these regulations it will be seen that precautions guarding
the health of boys are taken in the case of factories and workshops. There
are rules, there is an enforcing and inspecting authority, and there is
required a report in all cases of serious accident. But, with one
exception, no steps are taken to test the adequacy of the precautions by a
periodic medical examination of children and young persons, or to prevent
the employment of certain individuals who are physically unfit for the
work.
The exception is important, and observes attention, because it indicates a
possible line of reform. "In a factory a young person under the age of
sixteen, or a child, must not be employed ... unless the occupier of the
factory has obtained a certificate, in the prescribed form, of the fitness
of the young person or child for employment in that factory. When a child
becomes a young person, a fresh certificate of fitness must be
obtained." [73] A certifying surgeon is appointed for each district. "He
must certify that the person named in the certificate is of the age
therein specified, and has been personally examined by him, and is not
incapacitated by disease or bodily infirmity for working daily for the
time allowed by law in the factory." [74] "The certificate may be qualified
by conditions as to the work on which a child or young person is fit to be
employed," and the employer must observe such conditions.[75] The surgeon
has power to examine any process in which the child or young person is
employed.[76] A factory inspector who is of opinion that any young person
or child is unsuited on the ground of health for the employment on which
he is engaged may order his dismissal, unless the certifying surgeon,
after examination, shall again certify him as fit.[77]
This provision only applies to young persons under the age of sixteen, and
to children. It does not, moreover, apply to workshops. In the case of
workshops, the employer may obtain, if he thinks fit, a certificate from
the certifying surgeon.[78] The Secretary of State has, however, power to
extend the regulation to certain classes of workshops, if he considers the
extension desirable.[79]
In these cases, and these cases alone, is it necessary to call in the
doctor to certify the physical fitness of the boy for the employment in
which he is engaged. But under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, taken
in conjunction with the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907,
it is possible to extend considerably the system of medical tests. Under
the first of these Acts, which applies to children under the age of
fourteen--
"Sect. 3 (4). A child shall not be employed to lift, carry, or move
anything so heavy as to be likely to cause injury to the child.
"(5) A child shall not be employed in any occupation likely to be
injurious to his life, limb, health, or education, regard being had to his
physical condition.
"(6) If the local authority send a certificate to the employer saying that
certain employment will injure the child, the certificate shall be
admissible as evidence in any subsequent proceedings against the employer
in respect of the employment of the child."
If the child has left school--and under certain conditions a child can
leave school at the age of twelve--it is not easy to see how the local
authority can enforce these provisions. But with children attending
school, whole or part time, circumstances are different. Medical
inspection of school-children is now compulsory, and it is within the
power of the education authority to inspect any such children.[80] They
are therefore at liberty to examine any children known to be at work, and
any certificate of "unfitness" sent to an employer would probably be
effective.
Further, under the Employment of Children Act, Sects. 1 and 2, a local
authority may make by-laws permitting, subject to conditions, the
employment of children under the age of fourteen in any specified
occupation; and in the case of "street trading" the age is extended to
sixteen. It would be possible therefore, subject to the approval of the
Secretary of State, to make by-laws requiring a medical certificate of
fitness in certain forms of occupation in which children under the age of
fourteen are engaged.
Sec. 2. STATE ENTERPRISE.
In the preceding sections the State has played a passive part in the
supervision of the boy. It has contented itself with giving orders to
others, and with taking some more or less inadequate steps to see that its
commands are obeyed, but has directly done nothing itself. We are now to
see the State assuming duties of its own, and appearing as the active
guardian of the child. Individual or voluntary effort having failed, it
has been driven, at first reluctantly, but later with increasing
readiness, to fill the gap.
The State has now made itself directly responsible for providing schools
for the children of the nation. The schools play an important part in the
supervision of character. Attendance at school may be either compulsory or
voluntary. The law of compulsory attendance has already been stated.[81]
As a rule children must attend school till they reach the age of twelve,
and under local by-laws can in general be retained till they reach the age
of fourteen. In certain cases, important from the point of view of
discipline, the period of compulsory attendance can be prolonged. Children
under fourteen found begging, or wandering without home, or under the care
of a criminal or drunken guardian, or in general living in surroundings
likely to lead to crime, may be brought before a magistrate and sent to an
industrial school.[82] Here they are boarded and lodged, and may be kept
there up to the age of sixteen, after which time the managers of the
school have duties of supervision for a further period of two years, with
power of recall if desirable. Children who are truants or are convicted of
criminal offences can be treated in the same way.
For the majority of boys State guardianship is confined to the years of
compulsory attendance. But a considerable number continue their education
in various ways, and so remain under some sort of supervision. Children
may remain at the elementary school till the close of the school year in
which they attain the age of fifteen. The education authority has power to
provide and aid secondary and trade schools, and to make these
institutions accessible by means of scholarships; and secondary schools,
if in receipt of grants from the Board of Education, must in general
reserve a quarter of the places for pupils whose parents cannot afford to
pay fees. The education authority has power to provide evening
continuation classes for those who desire to avail themselves of the
opportunities thus afforded. Those who choose to attend these places of
higher education continue in some degree under the supervision of the
State.
But the supervision of the State through its schools is not confined to
the supervision of conduct. The education authority now exercises
important duties in connection with the health of the children in the
elementary schools. It is now obligatory on every education authority to
inspect medically all children on their admission to school, and at such
other times as may be prescribed by the Board of Education.[83] In their
original memorandum to education authorities the Board of Education
required these inspections--on admission to school, and at the ages of
seven and ten.[84] These regulations have not at present been enforced,
but the London County Council has now adopted a scheme which practically
embodies them. The local education authority is empowered, with the
consent of the Board of Education, to make arrangement for attending to
the health of the children.[85] Medical inspection is compulsory, medical
treatment optional. Further, the local education authority may draw on the
rates to feed school-children, whether their parents are destitute or not,
provided it is satisfied that the children, for lack of food, are unable
to profit by the instruction given.[86]
Finally, the local education authority may receive into its day industrial
schools children at the request of their parents, who must pay towards the
expense such sum as may be fixed by the Secretary of State.[87]
It will be seen that, acting through the local education authorities, the
State has now assumed large duties in connection with the supervision of
children. To submit to the discipline of the schools the vast majority of
the children of the county; to examine medically all children in these
schools; to feed the necessitous children, and to treat medically the
ailing children in the elementary schools; to remove and provide for until
the age of sixteen unfortunate children exposed to an unfavourable
environment--these are powers which constitute no small measure of State
enterprise.
II.
STATE TRAINING.
Training that shall fit a boy for a trade is of two kinds, general and
special. The first must develop those mental qualities of alertness,
intelligence, and adaptability required in all forms of occupation; the
second must give definite instruction in the principles and practice of
some particular industry or branch of industries. For the first provision
is made in the elementary school system, with its powers of compelling
attendance. For the second we must look to the various types of
continuation school. Here, under existing conditions, the State can only
offer facilities; it cannot enforce attendance.[88]
Since the passing of the Education Act, 1902 and 1903, progress has been
marked in both directions. The old "voluntary" schools, whose rolls
contained the names of half the scholars in the country, and whose limited
funds constituted an impassable barrier to all advance, are now maintained
out of the rates; and the gap between non-provided and council schools is
closing up. The breaking up of the small School Boards and the
establishment of larger authorities controlling all forms of education
have made for efficiency, while the merging of educational matters in the
general municipal work is insuring that practical criticism of his schemes
which the educationalist always resents but always requires.
_(a) The Elementary School._
It is obvious that, with the variety of children every school contains and
their tender age, no definite trade training can be given in the
elementary school. On the other hand, we have advanced far beyond the old
educational ideal of providing a common and uniform type of instruction in
the common school. Types of school are being multiplied to meet the needs
of different kinds of pupils. Provision has long since been supplied for
the mentally and physically defective, and serious attempts are now being
made to break up and classify that huge group which includes the so-called
normal child. In addition to the varying types of elementary school which
are in process of being adapted to the differing needs of the locality,
and the different classes of child, we have, under the elementary school
system, what is known as the "higher elementary school." Originally a
school specializing in science and of little value, it is tending to
become, under the more recent regulations of the Board of Education, a
school where a definite bias, either in the direction of commerce or
industry, is given to the curriculum. It is true that the number of
schools called "higher elementary" shows little signs of increase.[89]
This is due to the rigid and inflexible rules of the Board of Education,
which seem expressly designed to kill, and not to encourage, the
experiment. But while the name is being dropped, the thing is being
preserved and multiplied. London, for example, has recently adopted a
scheme for the development of sixty of these types of school, to be called
"central schools." The curriculum of each school is determined after
taking into account the industrial needs of the neighbourhood in which it
is placed. The education given is general in character, but the selection
of subjects has special reference to some profession or group of trades.
Broadly speaking, there are two general types of school, the commercial
and the industrial. The industrial type is already subdivided into the
woodwork and the engineering type, and further subdivisions will gradually
be formed. In these schools no attempt will be made to teach a trade, but
such subjects are included in the curriculum as will be found useful in
the trade. In the woodwork type, for example, in addition to a
considerable amount of time devoted to practical instruction in woodwork,
special attention is given to the kinds of arithmetic and drawing required
by the intelligent carpenter. An elaborate scheme for picking out between
the ages of eleven and twelve the children suitable for these different
kinds of school has been drawn up. A four years' course of instruction is
provided for. In order to induce the poorer parents to allow their
children to remain beyond the age of compulsory attendance, the education
committee offers bursaries, thereby exercising that negative form of
compulsion technically known as a bribe. Other education authorities are
establishing schools with similar aims. The experiments are recent, and
mark an important and new development. Two advantages are anticipated.
First, the variety in the types of school and the careful selection of
scholars will promote intelligence by providing that particular kind of
educational nutriment best adapted for encouraging the growth of a
particular order of mind. Secondly, by guiding the interests of boys in
the direction of various occupations, it is hoped that on leaving school
these interests will lead the boys to enter those occupations for which to
some extent they have been prepared, and in which they are most likely to
succeed. The elementary schools, as a body, will thus become a kind of
sorting-house for the different trades, and be freed from that charge, to
some extent justified, of catering only for the lower ranks of the
clerical profession.
_(b) The Continuation School._
It is becoming year by year more generally recognized that a system of
education which comes to an end somewhere about the age of fourteen is
incomplete and profoundly unsatisfactory. Without attendance at a
continuation school of some kind, a boy rapidly loses much of the effect
of his previous education, and at the same time is deprived of all
opportunity of enjoying the advantages of a more specialized training. To
meet this need a complex system of continuation school has grown up. It
lacks, however, the element of compulsion, except that negative form
already alluded to--the bribe of a scholarship. Looking at the machinery
as a whole, it may be admitted that the State does afford considerable
opportunity to those anxious to continue their general education, or to
obtain some specific form of technical instruction. Whether sufficient use
is made of this opportunity is a question that must be answered in the
following chapter. But taking the machinery as a whole, and as it exists
under the best education authorities, the machinery does touch to some
extent the principal trades and professions.[90]
1. Provision is gradually being made for those likely to succeed in the
higher branches of industry and commerce. The number of secondary schools
is being increased, their quality improved, and their types varied.
Technical institutes providing day and evening classes of an advanced
character are being rapidly multiplied. University instruction, aided out
of public funds, is becoming more plentiful and efficient, and, whether
during the day or in the evening, is year by year offering larger
opportunities to students. Progress is especially marked in the faculties
of economics and technology. Scholarship systems, more or less
incomplete, make access to these institutions possible for the poorer
classes of the community. The trend of development seems to suggest that a
system of organization, calculated to provide training for the highest
positions in the industrial and commercial world, is developing along the
following lines:
Between the ages of eleven and twelve the brightest children will be
transferred from the elementary to the secondary school. The secondary
school will provide a course of instruction extending to the age of
eighteen. Broadly speaking, there will be three types of secondary school,
the first giving a general and literary education, the second specializing
in commerce, and the third in some branch of science and technology. At
the age of eighteen the suitable students will be removed to the
University, where they will receive a three or four years' course of
instruction suitable to the profession they are intending to enter. It is
probable that at the age of fourteen there will be an additional, though
smaller, transfer of children from the elementary schools, in order that
provision may be made for those who have slipped through the meshes of the
scholarship net at the first casting. Scholarships with liberal
maintenance grants will make readily accessible to all who are fit the
advantages of a prolonged education. Evening classes, leading even to a
degree, will remain for those who, for one reason or another, have failed
to obtain in their earlier years the advanced instruction they now
require.
An organization of this kind is not at present found anywhere in its
complete form, but it is sufficiently complete in certain directions to be
considered here, where we are concerned with attainments, and not reserved
for a later chapter, where we shall be examining new paths of progress.
2. For those likely later to fill the position of foreman, or to become
the best kind of artisan, the day trade school is provided. The boys enter
the trade school on leaving the elementary school about the age of
fourteen or fifteen, and go through a two and sometimes a three years'
course of instruction. These schools continue the education of the boy,
with special reference to the trade concerned, and at the same time devote
a large amount of time to supplying an all-round training in the various
skilled operations the trade requires. They are essentially practical in
character, and this practical character is often assured by a committee of
employers, who visit the school and criticize the methods of instruction.
3. For those already apprenticed to, or engaged in, the trade two forms of
instruction are provided. The most satisfactory are the classes attended
during the day. Attendance at such times can only be secured by inducing
the employers to allow their lads time off during working hours. In some
cases the element of compulsion is introduced by the employers, who make
attendance at such classes a condition of employment. The other form of
instruction is provided during the evening at a technical institute. In
either case the instruction is of a practical nature, and designed to
supplement the training of the workshop.
4. For those who have entered, or desire to enter, the lower walks of
commerce, or the civil or municipal service, there is the evening school
of a commercial type, usually held in the building of an elementary
school.
5. Of the boys who, engaged in unskilled work during the day, are anxious
to continue their general education or to improve their position, the
evening school again supplies the need. Some practical work is done in the
woodwork or metal centres, but the limited equipment of the elementary
school stands in the way of any advanced technical instruction. If we omit
the commercial classes, already mentioned, attendance at an evening school
often means little more than attendance once a week at a class where
instruction is given in a single subject, and not infrequently the
recreative element is predominant. Recently, and with considerable
success, the "course" system has been introduced. Here the students,
instead of being present at a single class once a week, attend on several
evenings during the week, and go through a course of instruction in
several subjects connected together and leading up to some definite goal.
If to these various types of continuation school we add the large number
of lectures on numerous subjects, we shall see that the State through its
schools supplies a considerable amount of technical instruction. It would
be false to say that the boys receive all the training that they need, but
it would not be beyond the mark to assert that in the case of many
education authorities they are afforded all, and not infrequently more
than all, the opportunities for which they ask. It is the demand, and not
the supply, that is deficient.
III.
STATE PROVISION OF AN OPENING.
Until the year 1910 the provision of openings in suitable occupations was
not considered among the duties of the State. It is true that here and
there, usually in co-operation with voluntary associations, an education
committee made some attempt to place out in trades the boys about to leave
school. But any expenditure in this direction was illegal, and under no
circumstances was it possible to do anything for those who had already
left school. But in the year 1910 the State, without premeditation, has
found itself committed to the duty of finding openings for children and
juveniles. The revolution was upon us before we had seen the signs of its
approach.
This assumption of a new duty was the unforeseen result of the
establishment of Labour Exchanges. The Act of 1909 thought nothing, said
nothing, about juveniles. It was passed as a measure intended to deal with
the problem of adult unemployment. Now, there is no problem of
unemployment in connection with boys and youths; the demand of employers
for this kind of labour appears insatiable. Nevertheless, no sooner were
Labour Exchanges opened, than the question of juveniles came to the
front. Employers asked for juveniles, and the managers of the local Labour
Exchange, eager to meet the wishes of the employer, searched for and found
juveniles. Enthusiastic about his work, and prompted by the laudable
desire to show large returns of vacancies filled, it did not occur to him
that the problem of the juvenile and the problem of the adult had little
in common. He was not permitted to remain long in this condition of
primitive ignorance. Questions were asked in the House, letters were
written to the papers, deputations waited on the President of the Board of
Trade, all complaining that the Labour Exchange was becoming an engine for
the exploitation of boy labour. In the case of adults, no bargain as to
conditions was struck with the employer; the man had to make his own
terms. But the boy could not make his own terms, and public opinion had
for some years been uneasy about the increasing employment of boys in
occupations restricted to boys, and leading to no permanent situation when
the years of manhood were reached. Returns showed that it was largely into
situations of this character that lads were being thrust by the Labour
Exchange. The Board of Trade rapidly realized the evil, and set itself to
work to repair the unforeseen mistake. It wisely decided to grapple
seriously with the problem, and did not, as it might well have done,
restrict the Labour Exchange to adults.
It determined to appoint Advisory Committees to deal with juveniles. In
London the following machinery is in process of being established: There
is a Central Advisory Committee, consisting of six members nominated by
the Board of Trade, six by the London County Council, and six by the
committee of employers and trade unionists, who advise the Board of Trade
on questions of adult employment. The duty of this Central Committee is to
advise the Board of Trade as to the appointment of the local Advisory
Committees, which will be formed to control the juvenile department in
connection with each of the London Labour Exchanges. It will also be the
duty of the Central Advisory Committee to advise generally on questions
affecting the employment of juveniles. Though the duties of this committee
are nominally advisory, its work will in practice become administrative in
character. Here then is an organization which in course of time will
probably have to deal with the problem of finding suitable occupations for
the child and juvenile population of London. Similar bodies are being
formed in other towns. As will appear later, this is one of the most
important social questions of the day. How these committees will do their
work only the future can show. But if the Board of Trade act liberally in
matters of expenditure, there is no cause for despondency, and we may well
hope that, by the purest of accidents, we are on the threshold of a new
era in the history of industrial organization. Chance is not always blind,
and some of its wild castings hit the mark.
Such, in broad outline, have been the achievements of the State during the
age of reconstruction, so far as concerns the problem of boy labour and
apprenticeship. Guided by sentiment, partial and limited in the sphere of
its operations, the State has yet drifted far from the moorings of
_laissez-faire_, and is destined to drift farther as the years go by.
How far the intricate machinery, slowly pieced together during the last
three-quarters of a century, is successful when judged by results, what
are its more serious defects, and what should be the lines of future
advance, before the establishment of a real apprenticeship system, it will
be the object of the following chapters to explain. But one truth should
now be abundantly clear: of the three essential factors of that system,
not one has been altogether neglected by the State, and in certain
departments its guardianship has been widely extended. In the department
of supervision it has, through its schools, created an organization to
watch over and to control the conduct of all its children; it has recently
recognized through the same agency its duty to provide for them at least
the elements of physical well-being; and through numerous Acts it has
endeavoured to insure for the boy worker a minimum standard--low, indeed,
but still real--of proper conditions of employment. In the department of
training it has covered the land with a network of educational
institutions, which offer to all the possibilities of nearly every kind of
instruction. While, as regards the provision of an opening, it has
realized the urgency of the problem, and has taken the first steps to
supply the deficiency. These are all, in spite of many shortcomings, solid
achievements, hopeful in the present, and more hopeful for the promise
they bring of a larger measure of State guardianship in the years that are
to come.
CHAPTER V
APPRENTICESHIP OF TO-DAY
A true apprenticeship system, as already explained, must satisfy three
conditions: It must guarantee the adequate supervision of the youth of the
country as regards physical and moral development until the age of
eighteen at least is reached; it must supply means of effective training,
both general and specialized; and, finally, it must provide to those about
to cross the threshold of manhood an opening in some form of occupation
for which definite preparation has been given. The efficiency of the
industrial organization of to-day must be judged by the extent to which
these three conditions are satisfied.
To what extent does the apprenticeship of to-day satisfy the conditions of
a true apprenticeship system? To answer this question we must look far
beyond the narrow limits of indentured apprenticeship as it still exists.
It touches only a fringe, and a vanishing fringe, of the problem. Life for
the youth has grown more complex since the passing of the old organization
of the gilds; its success or failure is the outcome of the interplay of
numerous forces. Four factors contribute, in a more or less degree, to the
result. There is the contribution of the State--the last chapter was
concerned with the description of the machinery which has slowly been set
up during the age of reconstruction--we have yet to test its influence in
the actual working; there is the contribution of philanthropic enterprise,
as represented in the religious bodies, the clubs, the apprenticeship
associations, and skilled employment committees; there is the contribution
of the home, with its discipline and training; and, finally, there is the
contribution of the workshop, using this term to include all forms of
occupation, with the methods of entry and the organization for securing a
supply of labour. Only when we have taken into account the effects of
these four factors can we pass judgment on the apprenticeship of to-day.
I.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE STATE.
In estimating the contribution of the State towards apprenticeship of
to-day, it will be convenient, as in the last chapter, to trace the effect
of this influence in two sections, the one devoted to a survey of the
results of State regulation, and the other to an examination of the
achievements of State enterprise.
Sec. 1. STATE REGULATION.
In its scheme of regulation the State has aimed, broadly speaking, at
securing three results. It has endeavoured to prevent boys from being
overworked or wrongly worked; it has sought to guard them from being
engaged in demoralizing forms of employment; and it has striven to secure
satisfactory conditions within the walls of the workshop.
The third task presents the fewest difficulties. Medical science is
sufficiently advanced to prescribe the conditions as to ventilation,
heating, sanitation, and cubic contents essential to the health of the
boys. The sad catalogue of accidents is sufficiently long to show where
danger, through inadequately guarded machinery, is probable. To enforce
the necessary regulations is comparatively easy. There must be a suitable
number of inspectors, and these inspectors must be specially trained for
their work. Neither condition is at present fulfilled. The staff of
inspectors is much too small, and the inspectors themselves frequently
lack the requisite technical qualifications.
In the work of guarding boys from being engaged in occupations
demoralizing to character, the State has only recently taken the first
steps. The Employment of Children Act prohibits street trading under
certain conditions. As will appear later in this chapter, there are a
large number of occupations where regulation is much required. Indeed, it
is a comparatively new idea that the nature of the employment of the boy
may have a profound influence on the well-being of the man.
In the department of regulation the most elaborate machinery has grown up
around the attempts of the State to prevent boys from being overworked or
wrongly worked. The difficulties in the way of success have been two.
There has been the difficulty in getting the necessary law passed. In this
respect it is enough to mention that the "half-time" system, in spite of
practically universal condemnation, is still permitted, to show the almost
insurmountable obstacles presented by vested interests. There is next the
difficulty of enforcing the law. It is often urged that it is idle to
place on the statute-book laws which can easily be evaded. Too much weight
must not, however, be given to this argument. There is a moral effect in
the passing of every law. The fact that the State has condemned certain
modes of action is an important factor in the formation of public opinion.
Many people realize for the first time that the evils which are the result
of conduct hitherto regarded as harmless, because not regarded at all, are
sufficiently serious to call for State interference. The law may not have
its full effect; it will without doubt have some effect.
The question of enforcement is, however, of vital importance, and it is
well to consider the limits of the power of enforcement.
The best method of restricting the hours of employment is to see that the
boy is somewhere else during part of the working day. The half-time
system, which insured that the boy should spend half his time in school,
was established, not primarily with a view to his education, but to
prevent him from being overworked. It has, moreover, from its point of
view, been completely successful, and has in practice been enforced
without difficulty. The various laws relating to compulsory attendance at
school have exercised an influence more potent in the work of limiting
the hours of employment than all the other elaborate regulations on the
subject. If we see to it that a boy is in school, he cannot at the same
time be found in the factory. The machinery for enforcing attendance now
runs without difficulty, and its action is uniform and comprehensive.
The next method of restricting employment is the method of prohibition.
Here, again, enforcement presents no serious difficulty. If we forbid
children under a certain age to work for wages or to take part in certain
forms of occupation, it is enough to find them so engaged at any one
moment to secure a conviction.
The third method, which seeks to prevent boys from being overworked by
setting a limit on the number of hours during which they may be employed,
is almost impossible to carry out. The Shop Hours Act is frequently
infringed, and only the most rigid system of inspection can get evidence
of cases of infringement. Yet even here detection is comparatively easy. A
watch can be kept on the number of hours during which a shop is open, and
if this exceed the legal limit we have a fair presumption that the shop
assistants are over-employed. But in the case of children we cannot draw
this conclusion. We are supposing their hours are more limited than in the
case of the adults, and the mere fact that the shop is open during a
longer period affords no proof that the child is there all the day on all
days of the week. To enforce regulations of this kind we must set a watch
on the individual child, and on a large scale this is impracticable.
In judging of the results of State regulation, as described in the
preceding chapter, we may assume that the regulations are enforced--or at
any rate are enforceable--where employment is prohibited, or where
attendance at school is required, but that regulations which entail the
counting of hours have little effect in preventing overwork except by the
indirect method of forming public opinion. Further, when we are seeking a
path of reform, we must take the road of prohibition or alternative
attendance at school.
Leaving general considerations, and coming to details, it may be said
that, so far as children under the age of fourteen are concerned, the
system of State regulation, though a little cumbersome, covers a
considerable part of the field, provided always that local education
authorities make full use of the powers conferred by the Education Acts,
the School Attendance Acts, the Children Act, and the Employment of
Children Act, and provided also that the Board of Education and the Home
Office render full and cordial support. Unfortunately, these provisos are
very far from being fulfilled. More than 58 per cent. of the population,
for example, live in districts where the attendance by-laws allow of
conditional exemption at the age of twelve.
It is true that in nearly half the cases a fairly high standard of
attainment is required from the children, but with the remainder no higher
standard is required than that reached by the normal child at the age of
twelve.[91] Or, again, in connection with the Employment of Children Act,
out of seventy-four county boroughs, fifty have made by-laws in reference
to street trading, but large towns, like Leeds, Nottingham, or Salford,
have made none. Out of 191 smaller boroughs and urban districts, only
forty-one have made by-laws; and out of the sixty-two administrative
counties, other than London and Middlesex, only one.[92] It may fairly be
assumed that, where no by-laws relating to street trading exist, little is
done to enforce the other provisions of the Act.
As regards young persons, if we exclude the Acts relating to mines, which
affect a comparatively small number of lads, the Shop Hours Act, with its
mild provisions of seats for assistants and a maximum week of seventy-four
hours, the only Act which can be said to exert a large measure of
supervision is the Factory and Workshop Act. Assuming that the system of
regulation there found is adequate, and adequately enforced--both
assumptions far from being fulfilled in practice--there remain the young
persons who do not come within its provisions. The number of these is very
large. In the next chapter figures are given relating to the occupations
of London children on leaving school and between the ages of fifteen and
twenty. A study of these tables will show that not more than at most a
third of the young persons are brought within the scope of the Factory
and Workshop Act. A large proportion of the lads engaged in the building
trades, and practically the whole of those employed in shops, in
transport, in commerce, and in general labour, are excluded. In their case
there is no State supervision to regulate the conditions of their work.
Coming to concrete examples, the van-boy may in all kinds of weather spend
a dozen hours a day lolling on the tail of a cart, idle for much of his
time, and for the remainder holding the horses outside a public-house, or
lifting weights too heavy for his strength. The errand-boy, none too well
clad or shod, may, delivering parcels and messages, trudge through the
cold and rain over long leagues of streets during long stretches of the
week. The office-boy may be cooped up in a dark and ill-ventilated office
during most of the hours of daylight. The shop-boy may stand ten, twelve,
or on Saturdays fifteen hours of the twenty-four in the street or in the
shop, with one eye on the goods and the other on a penny novelette. And
there is no public authority to say whether the conditions of his
employment are satisfactory, no power to have him medically inspected, no
possible guarantee to insure that when he passes the threshold of early
manhood the vigour and the brightness of youth shall not have given way to
the feeble health and the torpor of old age. Unquestionably, we owe much
to sentiment for the evils it has denounced and remedied, but we owe also
to the regime of sentiment the fact that some two-thirds of the young
persons in the country are engaged in occupations carried on without
regulation and unvisited by any inspector of the State.
Sec. 2. STATE ENTERPRISE.
The most signal example of State enterprise in the realm of boy labour is
to be found in that huge organization of schools, elementary and
continuation, which now cover the country, and whose efficiency is rapidly
increasing. The organization has already been described; it remains to
summarize briefly its principal effects. First, the boys attend school
with astonishing regularity. An average percentage of attendances during
the year of ninety-five, and even more, is become common. Truancy is rare,
and growing rarer. The truant schools are being gradually emptied, and
several have been closed. This result is no doubt in part due to the
increased fine for non-attendance, and the pressure thus placed on the
parent. But excellent attendance implies much more than the elimination of
the truant; it means that, after making allowance for absences due to
illness and other sufficient causes, the boy attends school with perfect
regularity and punctuality at all times when the schools are opened. Now,
this ideal is in the case of the vast majority of boys attained. The
result must be attributed to the influence of the teachers over the boy.
Prosecution of the parent may cure gross irregularity, but perfect
attendance can only be secured by enlisting the co-operation of the boy.
The first effect of the school, then, is seen in the almost unqualified
regularity and punctuality of the attendance. If we reflect on the home
conditions of many of the boys, we shall be compelled to pay a high
tribute of praise to the work of the teacher. The second achievement lies
in the admirable order maintained within the walls of the school. Ready
obedience is the rule, and not the exception. This is in general not the
result of a system of harsh discipline--corporal punishment is decreasing
at once in severity and in frequency--it is due to the personal influence
of the teacher. In the third place, a spirit of industry and active
attention pervades the work of the school. In discussing with the
authorities of secondary schools the career of the children who have won
scholarships from the elementary schools, I have more than once been told
that the chief characteristic of these scholars lies in their patient and
strenuous diligence. In this respect they serve as an admirable example to
the fee-paying pupils. It is true that the scholars are picked children,
but ability and diligence are, as experience shows, by no means
inseparable companions. Here, again, we see the effect of the school.
Finally, the schools are institutions which make for character in the best
sense of the word. The moral training is gradually freeing itself from the
"do and don't" of the home, and is beginning to reach the higher level of
morality where the command is "to be this, not that." A standard of school
honour is being sought for, and sometimes attained. To take a single
example. In what is perhaps the poorest school in all London, set in the
most squalid and vice-haunted region, it has been made a matter of honour
with the boys who are receiving school dinners to come to the headmaster
as soon as the home circumstances temporarily improve and say: "I don't
want a dinner this morning, because father has got a day's work."
Habits of regularity, obedience, and industry, and the cultivation of a
sense of honour--these are the chief results of State supervision carried
out by means of the schools. Two questions require an answer: Do these
qualities, found within the precincts of the school, overflow and affect
the conduct of the boys outside the school? Do they last when school-days
are over, and the boys gone out to work? With regard to the first, there
is good reason to believe that they do overflow. The school training does
influence the conduct of the boys outside. No one who has watched a
zealous headmaster replace an ancient and inefficient teacher of the old
type can fail to have observed a striking change in the behaviour of the
boys as seen in the street and in the home. With regard to the second
question, we must reply that undoubtedly in many cases the qualities
gradually disappear. When we come, as we shall do shortly, to the survey
of the conditions of boy labour, we shall not be surprised at this
unfortunate truth. It would be difficult to imagine any form of training
that would be permanent when all discipline is relaxed or entirely
discontinued at the most critical period of the development of the boy.
The elementary school is now made responsible for the supervision of the
health of the children. Medical inspection of all children is now
compulsory, while medical treatment is made legal. The education authority
may also draw on the rates to provide meals for necessitous children. It
is too soon to estimate the effect of these new powers, but if they are
used with wise generosity they should exercise a profound influence on the
health of the rising generation.
But however beneficent may be the influence of the elementary school, it
comes to an end abruptly at the age of fourteen, and often a year or two
earlier. Up to the age of leaving school, the boy is carefully guarded by
the State, and then, with no transitional stage, he becomes a man, and, so
far as the State is concerned, all control is withdrawn. Two or three per
cent., with the help of scholarships, may pass annually to the secondary
school, where State supervision is continued. Not more than 30 per cent.
of those who leave the elementary school attend an evening school,[93] and
even if they do there is no medical inspection in such places, and little
effective discipline is possible for boys attending evening school on two
or three nights a week. The remaining two-thirds disappear from the sight
of the State, which henceforth renounces all responsibility for their
supervision.
We have next to regard the schools as training-grounds for the workmen of
the future. We ought not to look to the elementary schools to provide any
definite preparation for a trade. Unfortunately, through no fault of
their own, and because of the industrial development of the day, the
schools are turning out in thousands lads completely equipped for a
certain class of occupation. We have already seen that the most signal
triumph of the schools is to be found in the habits of regularity,
intelligence, and obedience, which they impress on the boys. Now, these
qualities are essential to success in all walks of life; but for one form
of employment alone are they all that is required. This form of employment
includes those occupations in which boys and boys only are engaged, and
where the boys are discharged as soon as they become men. The
messenger-boy, the shop-boy, the van-boy, and even the boy who attends to
some machine which monotonously performs a single operation--the boy who
comes into one of these classes need take with him nothing but the three
recommendations of regularity, obedience, and intelligence. We shall trace
later the disastrous effects of these forms of employment. It is not
without significance that the rapid increase in the number of boys so
engaged has synchronized with the rapid improvement in the system of
elementary education. It is something of a tragedy that the most signal
triumph of the schools should be, perhaps, the cause of their most signal
failure.
Definite training must be looked for in the continuation school. It is
unnecessary to add much to what has been said in the last chapter; the
State offers opportunity, but with its existing powers can do little more.
Speaking generally, for the child of comparatively well-to-do parents,
for the clever child, for the child of unusual energy and physical vigour,
these opportunities can be enjoyed; but for the remainder--and that the
great majority--they are useless, because beyond the reach of ordinary
endeavour.
Of State enterprise in the provision of an opening it is too early to
speak; the juvenile branch of the Labour Exchange is only creeping into
existence. In the next chapter an attempt will be made to explain how best
can be realized the possibilities which lie latent in these institutions.
Sec. 3. SUMMARY.
We are now in a position to summarize the achievements and the defects of
the contribution of the State towards the creation of a true
apprenticeship system. Its machinery of regulation has removed the worst
abuses of child labour, and in certain departments of industry protects,
with some degree of success, the health of the young persons engaged. Its
enterprise in the field of education is providing supervision over the
health and conduct of the boy till he reaches the age of fourteen, while
for the young person it offers opportunities of longer supervision and
technical training.
If much has been done, much more remains undone. Regulation still leaves
rampant many of the evils of child labour. Some two-thirds of the boys as
they leave school enter occupations where regulation hardly exists. State
enterprise for all practical purposes exerts no supervision over lads
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen--the most important epoch of
their lives. Technical training, and even the continuance of general
education, are possible only for a favoured few, and for the present there
is no State provision of an opening.
These are grave defects, and apprenticeship of to-day stands condemned
unless it can be shown that one or other of the remaining factors supply
what the State has failed to give.
II.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF PHILANTHROPY.
The second of the general forces, as distinguished from the individual and
special influences of the home and the workshop, which may make some
contribution towards the apprenticeship of to-day must be sought among the
varied religious and philanthropic associations. While we could not expect
from these bodies any assistance in the work of technical training, we
might hope to find in their midst conditions which make for the better
supervision and control of the lads who have left school.
Beginning with the more distinctly religious associations, we find among
them practical unanimity of opinion. One and all confess sadly that they
are unable to keep in touch with the boys after they have gone out to
work. For the tens of thousands of schoolboys who attend Sunday-school
there are only hundreds of lads on the roll of Bible-classes. The sudden
change from the status of schoolboy to the status of wage-earner, which
for the majority severed all connection with the education authority, has
even more decisively brought to an end the supervision of church and
chapel.
The miscellaneous associations represented by clubs, lads' brigades, boy
scouts, and the like, have all been called into existence for the express
purpose of exerting some measure of control over that transition period of
life which separates the boy from the man. How many lads between the ages
of fourteen and eighteen come within the sphere of influence it is not
possible to say with any exactness. The Twentieth Century League estimated
in 1903 that in London about 27,780 boys were connected with institutions
of this character, and we shall see later that there are in London about
120,000 boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
It would be no less difficult to weigh the value of the work done.
Existing as they do on a voluntary basis, and free from all element of
compulsion, such supervision as they exert must take the form of tactful
guidance. Their success or failure depends less on the machinery and more
on the personal qualities of the manager. The wide and admirable influence
of the best clubs is the triumph, not of the system, but of the
exceptional individual. Exceptional individuals are, it must be
remembered, exceptional, and an organization which depends on their
presence is necessarily limited in the extent of its operations. We cannot
therefore look to these associations to meet adequately the call for
supervision.
Of recent years numerous associations have been formed with the object of
providing suitable openings for boys. There are two sides to their work.
On the one hand, situations are found, terms made with employers as to
wages and training, and steps taken to see that these terms are carried
out. On the other hand, periodic visits are paid to the boy in his home,
advice given as to attendance at evening schools, and friendly relations
established between boy and visitor. In general, these bodies are
concerned with placing out lads in skilled trades, though here and there
some attempts have been made to attack the better parts of the unskilled
labour market. Work of this character entails the expenditure of much time
and money, and requires for the negotiation with employers considerable
technical qualifications. Experience has shown that a staff of volunteers
cannot alone perform the necessary duties, and paid officers have been
appointed. The cost necessarily limits the expansion of the organization.
Out of the 30,000 boys who annually leave the elementary schools of
London, it is probable that not more than 2 per cent. come under the
influence of these associations. On the other hand, if the sphere of their
operations is limited, within that sphere it has achieved very
considerable success. They have been pioneers in a new movement, have
fully justified their existence, and must now look to the State to
continue on a larger scale, but on the same general lines, the work that
they have begun. Unlike most volunteers, these employment committees
welcome this transfer, and are now readily placing their services at the
disposal of the Board of Trade through its juvenile Labour Exchange.
This brief survey of the contribution of philanthropic enterprise to the
apprenticeship of to-day reveals one obvious conclusion: the associations
only touch a fringe of the problem, and in no way exert any comprehensive
measure of control over the lads between the ages of fourteen and
eighteen. Their number, their variety, and their enthusiasm, indicate the
urgent need of supervision rather than supervision successfully achieved.
We cannot look to them to supplement in any large degree the defects in
the scheme of State guardianship, or the more grave defects which will
appear when the conditions of home and workshop have been passed in
review.
III.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE HOME.
What contribution does the home make to the solution of the apprenticeship
question? We cannot, indeed, expect to find within the walls of the home
provision made for the general education of the boy, or the specialized
training of the youth; but it is not unnatural to look to the parent to
exercise supervision over his children till manhood is reached, and
likewise to offer to the boy leaving school advice and material assistance
in the selection of a trade. We are still inclined to regard the family as
the one relic of the patriarchal system that has retained a vigorous
vitality through all the ages; we are still apt to see in the home a
small world, edged off from the large world outside, self-centred,
self-ruled, and enjoying all the advantages of a benevolent despotism.
To what extent is this general assumption justified by the results of
actual experience? The question is of profound importance, and has not
received the attention it deserves from those who have written on boy
labour. If we can take it for granted that in the normal home we have the
means of controlling the boy and the growing lad up till the age of
eighteen, we have a solid foundation on which to rest the new
apprenticeship. Abnormal homes may need attention; but if the problem of
supervision is solved for the majority, if there is an authority to which
the boy submits himself as a matter of course, to add training and to
organize openings are tasks which should present no serious difficulty.
Can we look to the home to provide this fundamental basis of a true
apprenticeship system? To answer this question we must study the homes
themselves. A few years ago I devoted a large amount of time to the
collection of material touching the character of family life in towns. The
results were published in an essay entitled "The Boy and the Family." [94]
I may perhaps be allowed to summarize the conclusions there established.
Home varies from home; each may be said to have its own individuality, but
each has much in common. To give definiteness to the problem, I
endeavoured to class the homes under three types. In the main, type
number one referred to the inhabitants of one and two room tenements; type
number two embraced the families possessing three rooms; while the third
type included those persons fortunate enough to rent more than three
rooms. The size of the home proved a rough, though the best attainable,
method of classifying the characteristics of the inmates.
Supervision has been interpreted to mean two things--supervision of health
and supervision of conduct.
So far as the supervision of health is concerned, it is probable that very
few of the parents belonging to the three types possess the necessary
knowledge to carry out this duty. Among all classes of the community
ignorance on matters affecting the hygiene of the home is almost
universal. But even if knowledge were present, the resources at the
disposal of large numbers would prove inadequate to make that knowledge
effective. With type number one overcrowding is the rule; with type number
two it is common; and only in the third type do we reach conditions of
housing favourable to health.
The experience derived from medical inspection of school-children and the
administration of the Provision of Meals Act has revealed the deplorable
condition of large numbers of children when left to the unaided care of
their parents. The returns of necessitous children fed, which are
published weekly in the minutes of the London County Council, showed that
during the winter of 1909-10 at the time of most acute distress, about 9
per cent. of the children in the schools were receiving meals. A careful
inquiry, the most elaborate of its kind, made into the home circumstances
of the necessitous children in certain schools showed that the number of
children actually fed was probably below, and certainly not above, the
number who required meals. The same inquiry, with its lurid pictures of
squalor and distress, proved how small was the prospect of health for many
of those children, even though they were fed at school. It may be regarded
as a conclusive demonstration of the call for more searching regulation on
the part of the State.[95] It is probable, however, that the need for food
is far larger than that represented by the number of children actually
fed. Several inquiries, such as those carried out by Mr. Charles Booth in
London, and Mr. Rowntree in York, indicate that the effective income of
nearly a third of the population is too small to supply in adequate
quantity even the bare necessities of existence.
Medical inspection is now revealing the number of children suffering from
definite ailments, and urgently requiring medical treatment, which they
have hitherto been unable, in a large proportion of cases, to obtain. It
would appear that some 10 per cent. suffer from defective vision, about 1
per cent. from discharging ears, about the same number from ringworm,
while at least a third are suffering in health from the result of
decaying teeth.[96]
Everywhere we have abundant evidence to show that, from want of
supervision, or of the effective means of supervision in the home, large
numbers of children are growing up ill-clad, ill-nourished, and suffering
from definite diseases, all alike leading to inefficient manhood.
The second department of supervision is concerned with the supervision of
character. Can we rest satisfied that the parents exercise over the
growing lads that salutary control all growing lads require? The question
is of profound importance, if, as all agree, character is the condition of
success when the first steps are taken in the industrial world. It is
necessary to distinguish between the boy attending school and the boy
exempt from compulsory attendance. In what follows I shall draw largely on
my essay in "Studies of Boy Life." The conclusions are derived from the
experience of many years' residence in a poor part of London, and have
been tested by a careful inquiry among ministers of religion,
school-teachers, rent-collectors, and others with special knowledge of the
subject.
Sec. 1. THE BOY OF SCHOOL AGE.
If the parents are to control the boys, the boys must come much under the
personal influence of the parents; in other words, rulers and ruled must
meet frequently. Now, in all three types of family the father exercises
little direct control over the children. If of good character, he is
either out at work or out looking for work during five days of the week,
and sees the children only in the evening. On Saturday afternoons and on
Sundays he is at home; but a week-end visitor cannot be the dominant
factor in domestic affairs. If control is exercised, it must be exercised
by the mother. To trace her influence, it is necessary to picture the kind
of life led by each type. I quote from my essay:
"So far as the first type is considered, it is not easy to say when the
children and parents meet.... The general order of events is something as
follows: If it is one of the days on which he elects to work, the father
rises about five o'clock, finds his own breakfast, and then quits the
house. Some two or three hours later the school-children get out of bed,
wash their faces, take a slice of bread and dripping, and go out.
Sometimes the mother rises at that time and gets the breakfast, but in
most cases remains in bed. At nine the boys go to school. At noon school
is over, and the boys, after amusing themselves in the playground or
street for an hour, go home to get some food. The mother meanwhile has
risen, dressed the smaller children, performed the irreducible minimum of
domestic work, and then left the house to gossip with a neighbour, or earn
a few pence by charing. On rare occasions she may cook the children some
dinner, but as a rule they get what food they can find, and eat it in the
streets. Sometimes they receive a halfpenny to buy their own meal at a
fried-fish shop. The boys then return to school, escape at half-past four,
possibly go home to tea, and then once more turn for amusement to the
streets. There they remain until it is dark, and often in summer till dawn
begins to break, when at length they seek their dwelling and go to bed. In
many cases the boys do not find their way back to their own houses, but
take up their quarters for the night in the house of some friend.
Sometimes they do not sleep in a house at all. In one case of which I have
heard three boys spent a fortnight in a wash-house on the top of some
blocks. There they lived an independent existence, getting their food and
attending school regularly all the while. Later on, being discovered by a
policeman, they were sent to their respective families.... Week follows
week with little variation to mark the march of time. As brief a fragment
of the boy's life as is possible is spent within the common dwelling,
which offers him no occupation, and is entirely devoid of interest or
attraction. The mother does not demand his presence indoors, while he
himself has no wish to be there. The street, and not the house, ought
probably to be regarded as the home or meeting-place of the family." [97]
Supervision under circumstances of this kind must be an almost negligible
factor in the life of the home. Let us now come to the second type. I
quote again:
"In the second type, as already mentioned, the family usually occupies
three rooms. At first sight the conditions found in the former type seem
to prevail here also. Indeed, as a matter of fact, the boys spend hardly
more time at home than those just considered. Out of school hours they are
either in the street or employed in some form of paid work.... School,
street, meals, and bed alternate with one another here in much the same
way as they did in the first type. But while the facts remain for the most
part unchanged, their setting and colouring are very different. Another
atmosphere seems to pervade the whole life; some sense of order and
regularity begins to manifest itself; meals are at fixed hours; and the
boys are expected home and sent to bed at more or less definite times.
They return to their own tenements, and do not spend the night with some
of their neighbours. As will appear later, home interests begin to
develop; and if the boys spend their leisure in the streets, this is due
more to their own choice than to the wish of their parents.... The mother
does not display the utter indifference to the state of the dwelling or
the habits of the children conspicuous in the first type. Some sort of
ideal of home she seems to possess, but to obtain this ideal is beyond her
power. She has the look of one who feels that things are wrong, and yet
can see no remedy. She notes, for example, the evil influence the street
exerts on the characters of her boys, but does not know how to preserve
them from its overwhelming attractions." [98]
"The chief difference, then, between the first and second type lies not so
much in a different kind of life as in a certain change of atmosphere that
pervades and transforms the common existence. In the third type this
change of atmosphere becomes more conspicuous. A great part of the boy's
time is, indeed, still spent outside the dwelling-place, but the life at
home begins to assume larger proportions. There is more order and quiet in
the house--a condition which reacts favourably on the boys. They are no
longer seen hanging about the streets, loafing at the corners, or shouting
noisily in the gutters. Though much out of doors, they go farther afield,
and visit parks or museums; while, if they stay near home, they will
usually be discovered in the school playground. In the evening many of
them are indoors, and have various occupations, of which, perhaps, reading
is the chief." [99]
In type number one, then, there is, for all practical purposes, a complete
absence of supervision. In the second type there is a desire for
supervision, but the narrowness of the house accommodation thrusts the
boys into the streets. In the third type alone are the conditions
favourable to supervision.
Sec. 2. THE BOY AFTER SCHOOL DAYS.
If the boy while at school is under little parental control, it is not to
be expected that this control will be tightened when school days are over.
With the first type of family there was no supervision before, and there
is no more afterwards. The boy is self-supporting, and troubles little
about the home, and the home troubles little about him. There is a partial
exception in the case of the coster. Here the boy may become one of the
regular working members of the establishment, and remains with his father;
but the discipline is of a rude and ready sort.
With the second type of family the boy's earnings are of great importance
to the family, and the mother does her best to keep him at home. Any
exercise of discipline is avoided, lest the lad should take his earnings
and go elsewhere. He is rather in the position of a favoured lodger, whose
presence is valuable to the home, and who must be treated well for fear he
should give notice.
In the third type of family, the boy, with growing years, passes out of
the control of the mother, and is resentful of any restraint exerted by a
woman. What supervision he enjoys comes from the father. The two do not
meet often; father and son are seldom employed together, and the long
distance that frequently separates home and work places the boy beyond the
reach of parental control during the greater portion of the week.
Such in broad outline, rendered jagged, no doubt, by numerous exceptions,
is the quantity and the quality of the supervision exercised by the town
parent over the town boy. Even with the highest type no high standard is
reached, while with the lower we cannot contemplate the picture with any
degree of satisfaction. Speaking generally, the city-bred youth is
growing up in a state of unrestrained liberty; and what makes the problem
more serious is the fact that all evidence goes to show that this
disquieting phenomenon is not an accident, but the direct product of the
social and industrial conditions of the times. Towns are growing larger,
and with the growth of towns the whole conditions of family life are being
transformed. The old patriarchal system is gone; the father is no longer
an autocratic ruler in his small world. The family, so to say, has become
democratized; we have in it an association of equals in authority. Now,
the most ardent advocates of the extension of the suffrage have always
limited their demands to an appeal for adult suffrage; they have never
clamoured for children to be given a vote. Yet this, for all effective
purposes, is what happens in the home in the case of the boy as soon as he
has left school. The status of wage-earner has brought with it the status
of manhood, and his earnings have conferred on him immunity from control
and the right to be consulted in the politics of the home. Another fact,
not sufficiently recognized, tends to break down the patriarchal system.
With the steady improvement in the State schools, the boy is usually
better educated than the father; the father knows this, and the boy knows
it too.
It is idle, therefore, to look for any large amount of parental control
over the boy who has left school. We must face realities, however
unpleasant these realities may happen to be; and one of the realities of
the time is the independence of the lad. What is equally significant is
the suddenness with which this independence comes. Until the age of
fourteen he has remained under a carefully designed system of State
supervision, exerted by the school authorities; while in a large number of
cases the discipline of the home has been an important factor in his
existence. At the age of fourteen, as a general rule, the control of
school and home end together. The lad goes to bed a boy; he wakes as a
man. There should therefore be little cause for surprise if the habits of
the school and home are rapidly sloughed off in the new life of
irresponsible freedom.
Whether, therefore, we look to the State, to philanthropic enterprise, or
to the home, we find no satisfactory guarantee for the supervision of the
youth of the country. We have yet to search for this supervision in the
workshop; but if it is absent there, we shall be faced with the
disquieting phenomenon of the boy at the age of fourteen enjoying the full
and complete independence of the adult.
IV.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE WORKSHOP.
Having examined three out of the four factors which contribute to the
apprenticeship of to-day, and found them all inadequate, we must now turn
to the workshop in the hope that we shall discover there conditions more
favourable to the well-being of the youth of the country. If, however,
this last factor prove defective, the apprenticeship of to-day will stand
condemned, and the case for drastic reform will become unanswerable. It
will therefore be desirable to devote considerable space to this, the
central feature of the problem of boy labour.
In what follows it is proposed first to make a detailed study of
conditions in London, and then to present a general picture of the state
of boy labour in other parts of the country. London has been selected for
a detailed study because in a peculiar degree it represents the extreme
type of urbanization. There is also the advantage that in the case of
London the material required for the examination has to a large extent
been collected. The investigations of Mr. Charles Booth, the publications
and inquiries on the subject carried out by the London County Council, Mr.
Cyril Jackson's report on boy labour presented to the Poor Law Commission,
and numerous other writings, have provided for the study of London a mass
of information which, though not in all respects exhaustive, is more
complete than can be found elsewhere.
Sec. 1. LONDON.
A study of the problem of boy labour in London involves the study of three
questions. First we have to consider the case of the children who, while
still attending school, are employed for wages. Next we must devote
special attention to the boys as they leave school and distribute
themselves among the different occupations. Finally, we must watch the
later career of those lads, and in particular endeavour to ascertain in
what way and with what results is made the difficult passage from the
status of the youth to the status of the man.
_(a) The Employment of School-Children._
In London the half-time system is not permitted. The standard of
attainment for total exemption has been made sufficiently high to prevent
the great majority of boys from leaving school till the age of fourteen is
reached. It is, however, a fact that improved methods of instruction and
more rapid promotion from class to class are tending to lower the age at
which it is possible to obtain a Labour Certificate. How far this
opportunity is used it is not easy to say; but in certain schools,
situated in the poorer districts, it is alleged that there is a growing
tendency for the brighter children to claim exemption in this way. The
regularity of attendance is admirable, the average attendance in boys'
schools exceeding 90 per cent. We may therefore assume that, if the boys
work for wages, they must work at times when the schools are not opened.
To what extent are boys employed while still liable to attend school? In
1899 a return was obtained throughout the elementary schools of England
and Wales of the number of children so employed. In London, in the case of
boys, the figures were 21,755.[100] The tables also give the ages of the
children, but boys and girls are not separated. If, however, we assume
that the number of children of each sex at each age is proportionate to
the total number of children of each sex at all ages, we find that 78 per
cent. of the boys were eleven and upwards, and 22 per cent. under eleven.
The number of boys of eleven and upwards would be about 17,000. There are
in the elementary schools about 70,000 boys eleven years of age and
upwards, so that about 24 per cent. of these boys are employed. In other
words, nearly a quarter of the boys in the elementary schools above the
age of eleven were employed at the time of the return. The actual number
of boys who are employed during the course of their school career would be
considerably larger, as they would not all be employed at the same moment.
The return is more than ten years old, but, with the exception of the
children under eleven, it is improbable that there has been much change.
Similar figures may be deduced from the Report of the Interdepartmental
Committee on the Employment of School-Children, 1901.[101]
With regard to the number of hours worked, Miss Adler's evidence is
selected, and typical schools show that 56 per cent. were employed for
more than twenty hours a week, while 14 per cent. were employed
thirty-five hours or upwards.[102] In individual cases the figures were
much higher. "Thus a boy of eleven years of age, for four shillings a
week, was employed for forty-three and three-quarter hours in carrying
parcels from a chemist's shop, and, except on Sundays, was practically
every moment of his life at school or at work from seven in the morning
till nine o'clock at night. Another boy, aged thirteen, worked fifty-two
hours a week, being employed by a moulding company, and attending a
theatre for five evenings a week and for half a day on Wednesday for a
_matinee_--for the last, however, playing truant from school." [103] The
following graphic account taken from a school composition, and obtained
under circumstances which guarantee its essential accuracy, shows the
amount of work which may be compressed into a single day. It refers to
Saturday:
"I first got up from bed about half-past six, and put my clothes on and
had a wash. Then I went to work at B.'s, and swept out his shop, and then
I did the window out. But after I done the window I had my breakfast and
went in the shop again. I started taking out orders that came in. While I
was taking the orders out, Mr. B. went to the Borough market for some
potatoes, cabbages, and some onions; but when he came home I had to unload
his van. After I unloaded his van, he went for some coal, which he sells
at one and sixpence a hundredweight, but he got two tons of coal in. Then
we had dinner about one o'clock. When we had our dinner, I had a rest till
about four o'clock, when I had tea. When I had my tea I had to go and chop
some wood, when it was time to shut up the shop. I had my supper and went
home, and went to bed, and the time was about twelve o'clock." [104] It
will be seen that, with the exception of a break in the middle of the day,
the boy was on duty for nearly three-quarters of the twenty-four hours,
and for part of the time was engaged in heavy manual labour.
What effect does employment have on the physical condition of children
under the age of fourteen? "That excessive employment is injurious alike
to the education and to the health of the children is hardly in question.
It was testified to by witness after witness, many of them in no way
likely to be influenced by merely theoretical objections to child
labour." [105] On the other hand, most of the witnesses that appeared
before the Interdepartmental Committee were of opinion that "moderate
work" was in many cases not only not injurious, but "positively
beneficial." [106] It is not easy to understand what is meant by the last
statement. If some form of employment is beneficial, then the 76 per cent.
who are not so employed suffer, and steps should be taken to encourage
them to work. It is doubtful whether the witnesses would have accepted
this conclusion, from which, on their own assumptions, there is really no
escape. The difficulty lay in drawing the line. "Most of the witnesses
seemed to suggest that twenty hours might be fixed as the maximum weekly
limit; but, on the other hand, we found some cases where less than twenty
hours a week, if concentrated in one or two days, or if done at night,
must be injurious." [107]
But the evidence of most value on the subject is to be found in a Report
of the Medical Officer of the London County Council.[108] About 400 boys
employed outside school hours were examined. The following table, with
defects in percentages, was obtained as the result:[109]
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Actual |Fatigue| |Severe| |Severe|
|Hours worked | Number |Signs. |Anaemia.|Nerve |Deformities.|Heart |
| Weekly. |of Boys.| | |Signs.| |Signs.|
|------------------|--------|-------|-------|------|------------|------|
|All schoolboys of | | | | | | |
| district workers| | | | | | |
| and non-workers | 3,700 | -- | 25 | 24 | 8 | 8 |
|Working 20 hours | | | | | | |
| or less | 163 | 50 | 34 | 28 | 15 | 11 |
|Working 20 to 30 | | | | | | |
| hours | 86 | 81 | 47 | 44 | 21 | 15 |
|Working over 30 | | | | | | |
| hours | 95 | 83 | 45 | 50 | 22 | 21 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
It will be seen that the defects rise rapidly with increase in the hours
of work; while, even in the case of those working less than twenty hours,
there is a serious deviation from the average. The fact that 50 per cent.
of those working less than twenty hours should exhibit signs of fatigue,
even where no permanent physical evil results, must seriously affect the
value of the school instruction. In every case the workers compare
unfavourably with the average for the whole of the workers and
non-workers. We cannot view with satisfaction the truth that, even in
those employed with moderation, deformities and severe heart signs should
be nearly 50 per cent. above the average. The medical officer adds other
conclusions no less disquieting. "Working eight hours on Saturday is as
inimical as thirty hours during the week, and working through the
dinner-hour appears particularly productive of anaemia," [110] "Retardation
in school work was noted in 209 out of these 330 boys, 86 being one
standard, 83 two standards, 37 three standards, and 3 four standards
behind that corresponding to their age." [111] As his final conclusion the
medical officer states: "We must set up as an ideal the suppression of
child labour below twelve years of age, and during school life regulate it
to twenty hours weekly, and a maximum of five hours on any one day." [112]
The figures, however, would seem to go far in justifying the more drastic
remedy of complete prohibition.
It is, however, fair to mention that the Report of the Interdepartmental
Committee, and also the Report of the Medical Officer, refer to a state of
affairs prior to the passing of the Employment of Children Act. Under this
Act, as explained in the last chapter,[113] employment of children under
the age of eleven is forbidden, while the by-laws of the Council place
restrictions on the number of hours children may work, and the times of
day during which such work may be carried on. It is too soon to judge of
the extent to which these restrictions can be enforced. During the first
year of effective operation in London there were, in respect of boys under
the age of sixteen, 13,461 cases of infringement. Prohibition under a
certain age or during certain times of the day is comparatively easy to
enforce; but limitation of hours, as experience of the Shop Act shows, is
extremely difficult to enforce, and peculiarly difficult where, as with
school-children, persons are not employed regularly, but work irregularly
at times when the schools are not open. To get evidence sufficient to
justify convictions is almost impossible, except in a few outrageous
cases.
What, if any, effect does the employment of school-children have on the
general question of the preparation for a trade? Into this general
question the Interdepartmental Committee did not enter. They did indeed
regard certain forms of occupation as injurious, while they pronounced as
beneficial employment in moderation. But this statement has apparently
reference only to matters of health, and not to the relation of employment
during school days to employment afterwards. The question is of great
importance, as habits, in respect of work for wages, formed by the boy
cling persistently to the youth. It is necessary, therefore, to pay some
attention to the characteristics of the work which schoolboys undertake.
In London 90 per cent. of the work would be included in the three
following classes: (1) Shops--errand-running and delivery of parcels,
milk, newspapers, and watching the goods spread on the counters outside
the shops; (2) domestic--knife and boot cleaning, and occasionally
baby-minding; and (3) street employment--hawking of newspapers, matches,
and flowers, organ-grinding, and the like. Now, none of these forms of
occupation provide any trade-training, or offer an opening with
satisfactory prospects, to the boy as he leaves school. On the other hand,
this class of work has distinctly injurious effects. First, it is
employment of a casual character. Affected as it is, on the one hand, by
attendance at school, and on the other by Saturdays and holidays, it is
essentially irregular as regards hours. Secondly, it is easy to obtain,
and consequently lightly undertaken and lightly dropped. Where another
situation can be obtained at will, there is no demand on the worker to
display the qualities that make for permanence of employment. Thirdly, it
is work in which youths as well as boys are engaged; in other words, it
does provide an opening to the boy as he leaves school--an opening which
he is likely to accept, because it is the most obvious, but at the same
time an opening in one of those forms of occupation entrance into which we
should, as will appear later, do our utmost to discourage. It is
singularly unfortunate that a boy's first association with any kind of
paid employment should be of this nature. And, finally, it is at least
open to grave doubt whether that sense of independence of home which comes
with the consciousness of earning wages should begin at as early an age
as twelve or thirteen.
It would not be easy to imagine a more unsatisfactory form of preparation
for a trade than that provided by the kind of work carried out by
wage-earning children. If we add to this demoralizing influence the
injurious effect on health and education, the case for total prohibition
of boy labour during school-days becomes very strong.
_(b) The Entry to a Trade._
The great majority of boys remain at the elementary school till they
attain the age of fourteen; it is no less true that the vast majority
cease attendance as soon as that age is reached. The period of the next
four years--that is, from fourteen to eighteen--forms the most critical
time of their career. It is during these four years that the boy must, if
ever, have taken the first steps towards learning a trade. During this
interval his physical strength must mature, his character take on itself a
more or less permanent set, and the question whether his education shall
represent something more than a faint shadow of early impressions be
finally determined. In short, it is during these four years that the
future citizen is made or marred.
The previous survey, whether of the factors which contribute to the
apprenticeship of to-day, or of the evils which are found among
wage-earning school-children, does not guarantee a favourable start in the
world of whole-time employment. Each year about 30,000 boys leave school
at the age of fourteen to take up some form of work. These figures do not
agree with the Census returns, because the latter include all London boys
in all classes of society, whether at school or at work. Here we are
concerned only with the boys of fourteen who leave the elementary school
with the intention of earning their own living. Between the ages of
fourteen and eighteen there will therefore be 120,000 boys. It is the
careers of these 120,000 boys that we must now try to follow.
What are the first occupations selected by these 120,000 boys? During the
last few years the London County Council has endeavoured to find an answer
to this question. Each head-master of an elementary school is required
annually to fill up a form in respect of each boy who has left the school
during the preceding twelve months. The information asked for is
"occupation of parent," "occupation of boy," "whether skilled or
unskilled," or "whether a place of higher education is attended." Returns
have been received and summarized for the years 1906-07 and 1907-08. The
first return was incomplete, but the second included the vast majority of
those who left. Below is given the summary for the two years:
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| | Skilled.| Unskilled.| Higher |
| | | |Education.|
|-------------------------|---------|-----------|----------|
| Number | 8,662 | 15,910 | 1,524 |
| Percentage | 33.2 | 61.0 | 5.8 |
| Percentage, 1906-07 | 28.5 | 67.9 | 3.6 |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
It will be seen that, including those who went to some higher form of
education, little more than a third of the boys left school to enter a
skilled trade.[114]
TABLE I.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Number. | Percentage. |
| Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------|
| | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
|Trades and industries | 615 | 347 | 40.87 | 18.74 |
|Domestic offices or services | 23 | 46 | 1.52 | 2.48 |
|Transport (including messengers,| | | | |
| errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 191 | 829 | 12.69 | 44.76 |
|Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | |
| and dealers | 137 | 133 | 9.10 | 7.18 |
|Commercial occupations | 61 | 141 | 4.05 | 7.61 |
|General labour | 436 | 215 | 28.98 | 11.61 |
|Professional occupations and | | | | |
| their subordinate services | 11 | 5 | 0.73 | 0.27 |
|General or local government | 26 | 6 | 1.73 | 0.32 |
|Defence of the country | 5 | 1 | 0.33 | 0.06 |
|Higher education | -- | 27 | -- | 1.45 |
|Unemployed | -- | 102 | -- | 5.52 |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
| Total | 1,505 | 1,852 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
It is unfortunate that no full analysis has been made of these returns.
The value of the information which would have thus been obtained was not
supposed to justify the labour and expenditure involved in such an
analysis. I have, however, roughly analyzed nearly 4,000 cases, and
endeavoured to classify the occupations, in accordance with the table
founded on the Census return which will be given later.[115] I selected
for this purpose typical districts in London. Table I. includes returns
from all the schools in the electoral areas of Bermondsey, North
Camberwell, and Walworth; it represents a typical miscellaneous
working-class district. Table II. includes the electoral areas of Dulwich
and Lewisham; it may be regarded as typical of suburban villadom so far as
its inhabitants send their children to the elementary schools. Table III.
includes the electoral areas of Whitechapel and St. George's-in-the-East,
districts distinguished by the presence of a large number of small trades
and sweated industries. Table IV. includes the collective results of the
three preceding tables, and may be taken as fairly typical of London as a
whole. It was necessary to exclude the returns of a few schools as
incomplete, indefinite, or obviously inaccurate. Parent stands for
occupation of parent, boy for occupation of boy. The two do not quite
correspond, as in a certain number of instances the occupation of the
parent was unknown. I have included the telegraph-boys under "Transport,"
as for my purpose this classification was the more suitable.
TABLE II.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Number. | Percentage. |
| Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------|
| | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
|Trades and industries | 347 | 151 | 35.57 | 14.86 |
|Domestic offices or services | 14 | 27 | 1.45 | 2.64 |
|Transport (including messengers,| | | | |
| errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 70 | 350 | 7.24 | 34.31 |
|Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | |
| and dealers | 100 | 126 | 10.34 | 12.35 |
|Commercial occupations | 180 | 157 | 18.61 | 15.38 |
|General labour | 144 | 54 | 14.89 | 5.29 |
|Professional occupations and | | | | |
| their subordinate services | 47 | 2 | 4.86 | 0.19 |
|General or local government | 66 | 9 | 6.83 | 0.88 |
|Defence of the country | 2 | 5 | 0.21 | 0.48 |
|Higher education | -- | 76 | -- | 7.45 |
|Unemployed | -- | 63 | -- | 6.17 |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
| Total | 967 | 1,020 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
TABLE III.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Number. | Percentage. |
| Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------|
| | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
|Trades and industries | 349 | 305 | 51.09 | 41.84 |
|Domestic offices or services | 25 | 18 | 3.66 | 2.47 |
|Transport (including messengers,| | | | |
| errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 72 | 189 | 10.54 | 25.93 |
|Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | |
| and dealers | 91 | 48 | 13.33 | 6.58 |
|Commercial occupations | 11 | 39 | 1.61 | 5.35 |
|General labour | 116 | 63 | 16.99 | 8.64 |
|Professional occupations | | | | |
| and their subordinate services| 10 | 3 | 1.46 | 0.41 |
|General or local government | 8 | -- | 1.17 | -- |
|Defence of the country | 1 | -- | 0.15 | -- |
|Higher education | -- | 7 | -- | 0.96 |
|Unemployed | -- | 57 | -- | 7.82 |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
| Total | 683 | 729 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
TABLE IV.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Number. | Percentage. |
| Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------|
| | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
|Trades and industries | 1,308 | 803 | 41.46 | 22.31 |
|Domestic offices or services | 62 | 91 | 1.97 | 2.53 |
|Transport (including messengers,| | | | |
| errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 333 | 1,368 | 10.55 | 38.00 |
|Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | |
| and dealers | 328 | 307 | 10.39 | 8.52 |
|Commercial occupations | 252 | 337 | 7.98 | 9.36 |
|General labour | 696 | 332 | 22.06 | 9.22 |
|Professional occupations and | | | | |
| their subordinate services | 68 | 10 | 2.16 | 0.28 |
|General or local government | 100 | 15 | 3.17 | 0.41 |
|Defence of the country | 8 | 6 | 0.26 | 0.16 |
|Higher education | -- | 110 | -- | 3.05 |
|Unemployed | -- | 222 | -- | 6.16 |
|--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------|
|Total | 3,155 | 3,601 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
In the interpretation of these tables certain facts must be borne in mind.
None of the parents are returned as unemployed; this is because the trade
of the parent was asked for, and no account was taken as to whether he was
or was not employed. Secondly, the occupations are somewhat vaguely
described; this in particular is true of the term "labourer." More exact
information would no doubt have removed the parent from the class "general
labour," and placed him in the class "transport," and occasionally in the
classes "domestic servant" or "shop-assistant." Thirdly, the
messenger-boys are included partly under "transport" and partly under
"shop-assistants," the boy being termed sometimes an errand-boy and
sometimes a shop-boy. The term "office-boy," which appears frequently in
the returns, is vague. I have classed the office-boy as an errand-boy
unless the school return places him in the column "skilled employment,"
when I have included him under the heading "commercial occupation."
Making allowance for a certain inevitable inaccuracy which belongs to
returns of this kind, we have a general picture, accurate in all
essentials, of the distribution of boys among the various forms of
occupation immediately after leaving the elementary school. The columns
which refer to the trade of the parents, and indicate therefore the
distribution of the parents among the various forms of occupation, are of
considerable value. If we take Table IV., which may be regarded as typical
of London as a whole, and compare the last two columns, we shall at once
notice the striking difference that marks the distribution of boys and of
adults among the several kinds of employment. In "trades and industries,"
41 per cent. of parents are engaged, and only 22 per cent. of boys; 38 per
cent. of the boys are engaged in "transport," and only 10 per cent. of
parents. This fact carries with it a conclusion of great importance--son
and father can seldom work together. If, for example, 10 per cent. of the
parents are included under "transport," and 38 per cent. of the boys, it
is clear that little more than a quarter of such boys can be employed in
company with their parents. The actual facts, as revealed by an
examination of the individual returns, are much stronger, and demonstrate
the extreme rareness of father and son following the same occupation. In
the case of "trades and industries" the trade of father and son is not
infrequently the same; this is in particular true of "tailoring" trades of
the East End, included in Table III., where the proportion of adults to
boys are as fifty-one to forty-two. In suburban villadom, pictured in
Table III., the clerk is often father to the clerk, while the son of a
shopkeeper occasionally assists his parents in the shop. The coster habit
likewise runs in families. But with these exceptions father and son do not
work together. In consequence, in his first situation the boy is cut
adrift from the home and its control, such as it is. He has not his father
by his side to note and guide his conduct; and if he enters a skilled
trade, he lacks the personal interest of the parent to guarantee his
satisfactory training. We have already seen that the school supervision is
at an end; in consequence, the only disciplinary influence left is the
influence of the employer. The character of the employment and the nature
of the supervision of the master become, therefore, of supreme importance
to the well-being of the boy. It is consequently necessary to examine in
some detail the distinguishing features of the various kinds of
occupation. They are usually roughly classed as skilled or unskilled,
according as they do or do not lead to a form of employment which requires
specialized skill or specialized intelligence.
THE UNSKILLED TRADES.--Practically the whole of the unskilled trades are
included under the terms "domestic service," "transport," "shop," and
"general labour," and the great majority of the boys who select these
occupations may be said to select an unskilled trade. In Table I., a
typical working-class district, it will be seen that 66 per cent. of the
boys who leave the elementary schools come within this class. In Table
II., a suburban area, the figures are 55 per cent.; but a considerable
proportion of those included under "shops" appear to be employed in the
shops of their parents, and to be learning the business. In Table III.,
representing the small East End trades, the figures are 44 per cent.; but,
judged by wages and conditions of employment, the majority of the 42 per
cent. included under trades should be transferred to the class of
unskilled work. For all the districts, as a whole typical of London, Table
IV. shows the figures to be 58.27 per cent. The figures quoted above
ignore the boys returned as unemployed and unknown, the number of these
for all London being 6 per cent. They are boys waiting for something to
turn up; what will turn up it is impossible to predict. But it is safe to
say that a considerable portion will drift into unskilled work.
The unskilled trades fall into three classes. The first and smallest is
included under "domestic service." Under this head are found boys in
barbers' shops, page-boys, club-boys, boot and knife boys. Employment in a
barber's shop is notoriously unhealthy;[116] a barber's shop is also
supposed to be not infrequently the resort of the betting fraternity. The
fortunes of the page and club boy await the zeal of an investigator; the
knife and boot boy soon passes to some other occupation. Of the three
classes, domestic service is the least important and the soonest left by
the boy.
The second class, included under "transport" and "shopkeepers," is far the
largest and the most important. In all London some 47 per cent. of the
boys are found here; or, if we add a half of the 6 per cent. returned as
unemployed, we may say that half the boys who leave the elementary schools
belong to this class. It is necessary to take "transport" and
"shopkeepers" together, because it is impossible to tell whether a
"shop-boy" is merely an errand-boy, or a boy on the road to become a
properly trained shop-assistant. It is probable, however, that only a
small number could be regarded as future shop-assistants.
Ignoring these exceptions, we have to follow the fortunes of 50 per cent.
of the boys leaving school--in other words, of 15,000 persons. Their forms
of employment have much in common. In the first place, they are what is
known as "blind-alley" occupations--they lead nowhere. Boys only are
engaged, and when the boys become men they are cast adrift. Sometimes they
are absorbed in the adult service, but more usually, if they have not
already left, are given notice, and must at the age of eighteen seek out
some new way of earning a living. The report of Mr. Cyril Jackson makes
this fact abundantly clear.[117] "The industrial biographies received," he
says, "show clearly that there is generally a time of transition when boys
have to seek new occupations, for which they have little aptitude." [118]
Or again: "There appears to be no doubt that the restlessness of many of
the boys doing more or less unskilled work obscures from some employers
the fact that they are using a greater number of boys than can ever be
employed in connection with their trade as men. The employers who have
filled up forms often state that they 'never discharge a boy who is
willing to stay,' or 'that boys are only discharged for misconduct,' when
it is evident from the figures appearing in the same form that there must
be a considerable proportion of the boys passing out of the trade each
year.... That many employers, on the other hand, do in fact discharge a
considerable proportion of their boys because they have no room for them
as men--or, to express the same thing in the form in which it presents
itself to the masters, because they cannot afford to offer men's wages--is
shown in the short accounts of the trades in the Appendix." [119] It is
needless to labour the point further, as everyone familiar with the
conditions of boy work give evidence to the same effect.
The second characteristic of these trades is that they are mainly
concerned with fetching or carrying something--messages, letters, parcels.
It is characteristic of that stage of civilization at which we have
arrived that we want to save ourselves trouble, or to save ourselves time.
Boys are the instruments we use. "Here we are, all of us," says a modern
writer, "demanding an endless number of tiny jobs to be done on our
behalf. Every year multiplies these demands, increasing the pace at which
the jobs can be done, and the number of them that can be crowded into the
time. We learn to expect more and more conveniences at our elbow by which
communication can be made, business transacted, messages despatched,
parcels transferred, news brought up to date, transit hastened, things of
all kinds put under our hand. We touch buttons, press knobs, ring bells,
whisper down telephones, keep wires throbbing with our desires, bustle and
hustle the world along. And all this in the end means _boys_. Boys are
what we set moving. Boys are the material in which we deal. Boys are our
tools. Every wire has a boy at the end of it." [120]
This tendency to demand the services of boys has spread through all
classes of society. To take a single example of quite recent growth: It is
becoming less and less common for the housewife to bring the results of
her marketing home herself; a boy delivers the goods instead. Go into any
shop, even in the poorest part of the town, and make a few purchases; the
shopman will probably offer to send them home for you. There is something
flattering and pleasant in the offer; it is one of the new products of
competition to multiply conveniences instead of cutting prices. The demand
for boys is rapidly increasing; and while the demand is increasing, the
supply of boys has diminished. The raising of the school age, the improved
attendance, and the decrease of truancy, have all removed from the labour
market an immense number of boys. "The Census figures show that there has
been a steady diminution of boys employed under fifteen during the last
quarter of a century." [121] The Labour Exchanges testify to the same
effect, the managers frequently saying: "There is an unsatisfied demand
for juvenile labour of an unskilled type." [122] This growing demand has
two effects. First, as it becomes increasingly easier for boys to obtain
situations, there is less and less inducement for them to show such
industry and good conduct as are necessary to retain their places.
Dismissal has no terrors; it means, if they please, a few days' holiday,
or, if they prefer it, a new employer can be at once discovered. It
becomes therefore difficult for an employer to exercise over the boys the
discipline they need; if he attempt to do so, he will soon find himself
without boys. Lads change situations for the mere sake of change, to see
what happens. "I have known," says Mr. J. G. Cloete, "boys who, within
three years of leaving school, have been employed in as many as seventeen
different occupations." [123] The second consequence of the increased
demand for boys in these kinds of occupations is a rise in wages. The
earnings of these boys are considerably higher than those obtained by a
boy who enters a skilled trade. "The casual and low-skilled employments
give higher wages in the early years in order to attract the boys." [124]
With boys choosing, as they do, their own occupations, high wages at the
outset are more attractive than low wages with the prospect of learning a
trade.
The third characteristic these occupations have in common lies in certain
general conditions of employment. Hours are long; at the same time, the
boy is often idle for long periods, waiting for messages to come in and
parcels to go out. Shop-boys and telegraph-boys are kept hanging about
with nothing to do. The office-boy in a small office is often the whole
staff, and is left alone for hours when his master is out, and "spends his
time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or
in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature." [125] The boy has often heavy
goods to carry long distances, and overtaxes his strength. Either there
is too much idleness or too much work; these are the alternatives. In
neither case is there the possibility of much supervision.
The fourth characteristic has not received the attention it deserves.
These forms of occupation, though unskilled in the sense that the boy
receives no training in his present place of business, nevertheless demand
qualities of a high standard. The boy must be regular, obedient, and,
above all, intelligent. A dull boy as a messenger is liable to make stupid
and irritating mistakes. The stories of district messengers carrying
letters unaided over the Continent show that the boys possess no ordinary
intelligence. Now, we have already seen that these are the qualities which
are in a peculiar degree the product of the elementary schools. The
schools turn out innumerable boys of this kind. It is not, perhaps, a mere
coincidence that the increasing use of boys in occupations which call for
alertness of mind has gone on side by side with improvements in the
educational system. The State has spent much money on these boys. A boy
who starts to attend school at the age of three and leaves at fourteen has
had spent on him a sum of money which, if invested year by year at 4 per
cent., and left to accumulate till the time for leaving school comes,
would amount to nearly L100. Each year in the 30,000 boys who leave school
L3,000,000 of State-created value is turned adrift. The State has
therefore a right to demand that this capital sum of L100 invested in the
boy shall not be squandered by the employer. He ought to give back at the
age of eighteen at least as valuable an article as he received four years
earlier.
This consideration leads to the last characteristic distinguishing these
occupations. They lead to nothing, and when the boy reaches the end, he
is, in the majority of cases, distinctly inferior in every way to what he
was three or four years before. Evidence in favour of this assertion is
overwhelming. "At the present time, at the age of eighteen, after a four
years' course of employment, whose chief characteristics are the long
hours, the lack of supervision, and the total absence of any educational
influence, the lad is a distinctly less valuable article in the labour
market than he was when he left school four years previously. His only
asset is represented by greater physical strength, accompanied probably by
a marked decrease in general health and vigour. He has lost the
intelligence and aptitude of the boy, and remains a clumsy and
unintelligent man, fitted for nothing but unskilled labour, and likely to
become sooner or later one of the unemployed." [126] "There seems little
doubt that the boy labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that
they are left less capable members of the community, with little prospect
of good work when they become adults." [127] "The most hopeless position is
that of the errand-boy at a small shop in a poor neighbourhood; his
prospects are absolutely nil." [128] "The chart prepared from the forms
filled in by boys who entered life as errand-boys shows that the small
proportion who find steady and skilled employment afterwards have ceased
to be errand-boys very early; the vast majority become workers in
low-skill trades, or general and casual labourers." [129] "Mr. Courtney
Terell, who has been making inquiries from the Passmore Edwards
Settlement, writes: 'I feel confident ... that the messenger work produced
a definite effect on the boys, as will the continual performance of any
one of a definite function which admits of no improvement, and that this
has unfitted them for other work.'" [130] "The injury done to these boys is
not that they are compelled as men to devote themselves to low-skilled
labour, but that from the more or less specialized nature of the work
which has employed this boyhood, they are unfitted to become good
low-skilled labourers." [131]
It is impossible to resist the mass of evidence of this kind which might
easily be increased indefinitely. The boy gains nothing from this form of
employment and loses much. He loses the results of his training in the
elementary school; the habits of obedience, regularity, and industry are
dead; the bright intelligence is dulled, and with the coming of dulness
goes the power of learning. He loses his prospects; his future is the
future of the unskilled labourer--the unskilled labourer, robbed of that
grit and alertness which alone secure for unskilled labour the adequate
reward of permanent employment at a steady wage. His loss is the loss of
the community, which is compelled later to relieve him and his family, and
perhaps in the end find a home for him in the workhouse. And in thinking
of this deterioration, and of that hopeless future which that
deterioration involves, we must never forget that it is not a mere handful
of lads who suffer in this way, but that half the boys who leave the
elementary school start on this dreary journey, and, so starting, bid fare
to reach that dreary end.
Reckoned in money, the State has spent a million and a half on these boys,
and but little comes back to the State or remains with the boy. If it has
gone anywhere, and it probably has, then it has gone into the pockets of
the employers who have sucked out of the boys their value, and then cast
them aside as worthless refuse, a sort of slag or waste product of their
works, for which neither they nor anyone else can find a use. In saying
this there is no desire to censure unfairly the employers. They are
undoubtedly to blame, because thoughtlessness and ignorance in persons of
their position are always blameworthy; but there is nothing deliberate in
their actions, and they are largely unconscious of the harm they are
doing. There is no active cruelty, and often much rude and ready kindness.
The boys to them are merely instruments in the machinery of their
business, for the moment the cheapest instruments that can be found, to be
used until a new and better supply takes the place of those who are used
up. They are ignorant of the consequences of their conduct, and, as their
evidence shows, generally imagine that the boys who leave find suitable
jobs. It is only of late years that numerous investigators and managers of
boys' clubs have revealed the grave results of this thoughtlessness.
Employers who generally enjoy a good reputation as employers are often the
worst offenders. Indeed, the most flagrant example of this exploitation of
boy labour is to be found in the Imperial Government and the Municipal
Service. Mr. Cyril Jackson has in his report devoted much space to the
telegraph-boys in the service of the Post Office. "The boys come from very
good homes, and are often the pick of the family. They are examined
medically, and bring characters." [132] A mere fraction are absorbed in the
adult service. "It appears as if the Post Office is one of the least
promising occupations into which a boy can enter. The better boys go into
it, and it is very depressing to see from our returns how very few of the
very large number discharged at sixteen or seventeen get into as good
employment as their good social standing and general standard of education
should have guaranteed for them." [133] "Everyone of experience seems to
agree that these telegraph-messengers who are discharged exemplify in a
very striking way the evils of
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