employed a few apprentices who assisted him in his work, and who learnt from him to understand the details of their craft, so that, when the term of their apprenticeship was over, they were competent to practise as journeymen. But now the master frequently has neither time nor opportunity to instruct young lads, and the old relation of master and apprentice is changed into that of manufacturer and workman. In consequence of these altered relations between employer and employed, there has arisen an acknowledged want of properly trained workmen in a number of trades in which skilful hand work is still needed; and in these trades a demand has arisen for technical schools, or some other substitute for what was formerly done by apprenticeship, as a means of suitably training workmen and foremen. The ever-increasing competition in production has led to the employment, in many trades, of children to do work of a mechanical kind requiring little skill; but, whilst thus employed, these young people have little opportunity of learning those parts of their trade in which skill and special knowledge are needed; and when they are grown up, and seek higher wages, they are dismissed to make room for other children. Numbers of young people are thus thrown upon the labour market, swelling the percentage of the unemployed, who are competent to do nothing more than children’s work, and to earn children’s wages, and who know no trade to which they can apply their hands. To remedy this, by creating some substitute for the old apprenticeship, is one of the objects of a system of technical education; though in suitable trades an independent movement for reviving apprenticeship (q.v.) under improved conditions has also made some way.
A complete system of technical education should provide the necessary instruction for the different classes of persons engaged in productive industry. It is usual to divide these persons into three classes:—(1) workmen or journeymen; (2) foremen or overseers; (3) managers or masters.
The industries in which they are employed may be grouped
under four heads:—(1) those involving the use of extensive
machinery, such as iron and steel manufacture,
Classes of
workers.
workers, machine-making, the textile industries, and some of
the chemical trades; (2) those which mainly require
the use of hand tools, as cabinet-making, brick-work,
plumbing, and tailoring; (3) those depending on artistic skill,
as wood and stone carving, metal-chasing, enamelling,
decorative work, and industrial designing generally; (4)
agriculture in all its branches, and forestry. These industries will
be referred to as manufactures, handicrafts, art industries
and agriculture. The foregoing classification comprises groups
which necessarily, to some extent, overlap one another. Every
factory contains a carpenter’s and smith’s shop, and
handicraftsmen of group (2) are required in every manufacturing
concern. Whilst the industries in which hand labour is
exclusively employed are becoming fewer and fewer, there are
many trades which, owing to the frequent invention of labour-saving
appliances, are passing gradually from the class of
handicrafts to that of manufactures. In these trades, of
which watch- and clock-making and boot- and shoe-making
may be taken as examples, there is still a demand for goods
largely if not entirely produced by hand work. In such trades,
owing to the absence of facilities for instruction in the ordinary
shops, there is a want of skilled hand labour which there is
an increasing difficulty in satisfying, and to supply this want
technical schools of different kinds have been established.
Then, again, there are many branches of manufacturing
industry which greatly depend for their success upon the
designer’s art, and it is necessary that the industrial designer
should possess a knowledge of the processes of the manufacture
in which his designs will be utilized, as well as of the properties
and capabilities of the material to which they will be applied.
Indeed, it is the possession of this knowledge which mainly
distinguishes the industrial designer from the ordinary artist.
To determine the best training for such designers is one of
the problems of technical education. There are many trades,
too, in which the handicraftsman and the designer should be
united. This is the case in such industries as silversmith’s
and goldsmith’s work. In these and other trades the true
artisan is the artist and handicraftsman combined.
In order to reconcile some of the different views which are
held as to the objects of technical education, it is necessary to
keep in mind the broad distinction, above referred to,
Manufactures
and handicrafts.
between the conditions of production on a large scale,
as in those industries in which goods are manufactured
by the use of extensive labour-saving machinery,
and in those trades in which hand work is chiefly employed.
Much of the diversity of opinion regarding the objects of technical
education is due to the difference of standpoint from which
the problem is regarded. The volume of the trade and commerce
of Britain depends mainly on the progress of its manufacturing
industries. It is these which chiefly affect the exports and
imports. The aim of manufacturers is to produce cheaper and
better goods than can be produced by other manufacturers at
home or abroad; and technical education is valuable to them, in
so far as it enables them to do so. It also helps to widen the
area of productive industry, and to encourage varieties of activity
which the free and unfettered conditions of competition tend
unduly to restrict. On the other hand, the artisan engaged in hand
industries looks to technical education for self-improvement,
and for the means of acquiring that general knowledge of the
principles and practice of his trade, which he is unable to obtain
in the commercial shop. Hence the artisan and the
manufacturer approach the consideration of the question from
different sides. To the spinner or weaver who almost
exclusively employs women to tend his machinery, or to the
manufacturing chemist whose workpeople are little more than
labourers employed in carrying to and fro materials, knowing
little or nothing of the scientific principles underlying the
complicated processes in which they are engaged, the technical
education of the workpeople may seem to be a matter of little
moment. What such manufacturers require are the services
of a few skilled engineers, artistic designers or scientific chemists.
From the manufacturer’s point of view, therefore, technical
instruction is not so much needed for the hands he employs in
his work as for the heads that direct it. But in trades in which
machinery plays a subsidiary part, technical teaching supplies
the place of that instruction which, in former times, the master
gave to his apprentice, and the workman is encouraged to
attend technical classes with a view to acquiring that knowledge
of the theory and practice of his trade, on the acquisition
of which his individual success greatly depends. In the former
class of industries, technical education is needed mainly for
the training of managers; in the latter, for the training of
workmen. Hence has arisen a double cry,—for the teaching
of art and of the higher branches of science, with a view to
their application to manufacturing industry, and for the
specialized instruction in drawing, and in the scientific facts
which help to explain the processes and methods connected
with the practice of different crafts and trades. This double
cry has led to the establishment of technical universities and
of trade schools.
Owing to the conditions under which manufacturing industry
is now carried on, it is difficult to select competent foremen
from the rank and file of the workmen. The ordinary
Foremen
and
managers.
hands gain a very limited and circumscribed
acquaintance with the details of the manufacture in which they are engaged, and have little opportunity of acquiring that general knowledge of various departments of work, and of the structure and uses of the machinery employed, which is essential to the foreman or overseer. It is in evening technical classes that this supplementary instruction, which it is the workman’s interest to acquire and the master’s to encourage, can be obtained; and it is from the more
intelligent workmen who attend these classes that masters and employers will select as foremen those students who are found to possess the essential qualifications. The history of invention shows how frequently important improvements in machinery
