Industrial Democracy

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ...fervently to denounce the whole apprenticeship system, with its inevitable consequences of monopoly wages and profits. In our own day, it is impossible to calculate how much it costs the community to educate a boilermaker or glassblower. We may infer that we are paying for it in the relatively high wages of these protected trades, but how much we are paying in this way, and upon whom this burden is falling, it is impossible to compute. Undemocratic in its scope, unscientific in its educational methods, and fundamentally unsound in its financial aspects, the apprenticeship system, in spite of all the practical arguments in its favor, is not likely to be deliberately revived by a modern democracy.2 1 It is to this consideration, we think, that the Patternmakers in engineering establishments, and the Lithographic Printers in the great firms which now dominate that trade, owe their relatively effective position as regards apprenticeship. 2 The sawyers exhibit a curious evolution. The old hand sawyers of the early part of the century were notorious for the strength and exclusiveness of their Trade Unions. The introduction of the circular saw, driven by steam power led to the supersession of the old handicraftsmen by a new class of comparatively unskilled work...