cigars, 76 males and 86 females under 18 years of age are reported in a total of 2,839 male and 5,208 female employees. In the manufacture of confectionery, 1 male and 25 females under 18 years of age are reported as being trained for skilled work and 31 males and 310 females as engaged at unskilled work out of a total of 1,585 male and 2,993 female employees. In the building trades the number reported under 18 years of age learning a skilled trade is 422 in a total of 26,189 employees.

Various systems of training beginners exist in the different industries according to the nature of the work performed and the organization of the industry. The apprenticeship system is a survival from a period when only one class of industrialists existed, viz., the master-workman who was both merchant and craftsman and who in his own person bought and sold and practised all the operations of the trade. The apprentice, who was in turn to become the master, was at once both assistant and learner, and he received a training which it was to the advantage of the master to make as thorough and complete as possible. Later on the journeyman appeared, but for a long period he merely marked a state in the development of the master-workman and did not affect the status of the apprentice. When, however, the capitalist appeared and with him the fixed body of wage earners, the apprenticeship system lost its natural place in the industrial order. The master-merchant became the financial director and the mastercraftsman became the shop director or the wage earner. The first of these is in no position to perform the function of teacher, and the others have no interest in so doing.

The modern organization of industry on the capitalist basis means the employment of numbers of workmen as wage earners whose sole responsibility is the forwarding of the productive tasks assigned to them. Such organization generally also means extended division of labor. It means these things whether hand power or machinery be used in the industry. In the trades where machinery is used, the value of the workman's time for purely productive purposes is increased by the added cost of machine and power. With the entire working force engaged upon production, it is to no one's interest to turn aside and instruct the learner,

and such instruction, if in any sense comprehensive, can be given in the direct course of production only at a certain immediate loss. Under these conditions, the employer of to-day, drawing his workmen from the general labor market, that in some cases is largely fed by immigration, no longer feels the same individual necessity and responsibility for the training of beginners and hesitates to assume the cost and inconvenience of such a provision. The maintenance of a thorough apprenticeship system, having become exceptional, imposes in a sense a penalty upon the manufacturer who undertakes it inasmuch as he has no guarantee that apprentices will remain in his employ. Furthermore, the great subdivision of labor that characterizes all modern industries on a large scale imposes peculiar difficulties in the way of a thorough and comprehensive training, inasmuch as such a training involves a shifting of the apprentice from one branch to another that lessens his productive value. All these conditions make the employer slow to assume the trouble and expense of a thorough apprenticeship system. The tendency is more and more to place the beginner upon certain special branches at the tools and let him develop as quickly as possible into a productive unit.

On the other hand, as pointed out above, the journeyman under ordinary conditions has no interest or advantage in the training of an apprentice. His first consideration is, of necessity, his own wages, and especially in those industries that are upon a piecework basis, the journeyman has no time for teaching; furthermore, he is apt to look upon the apprentice as a future rival who will add to the supply of skilled workers and reduce his own chance of employment.

Another difficulty, and a very large one, that faces the apprenticeship question is the unwillingness of the American boy to submit to a long period of training at low wages for the sake of future opportunities. The tendency of the American boy is toward a short cut; he resents the rules and restrictions of the apprenticeship period and turns to openings that yield larger immediate returns. That this attitude is justifiable and natural in many cases where the so-called apprentice is given practically no assistance toward attaining a really broad training and where he is left largely to chance and his own initiative to pick up any

thing more than the rudiments of a trade, must be conceded. This attitude is only removed when the apprentice feels that his interests are being cared for and a systematic effort is being made to open up a future worth working for. That it is removable is satisfactorily shown in those instances where provision is made for systematic training and technical instruction on the part of the employer.

Another cause that holds back a bright boy from the apprenticeship is the low wages paid. Whereas the journeyman's wage has been advanced in most of the skilled trades under the influence of organization, the wages of the apprentice have not advanced in proportion to the demand for young men in the industries. Organized labor, with its mind almost solely upon the advancement of the standard of living, and the employer, with his mind almost solely upon the increase of profits, have neither been concerned to advance the wage of the apprentice, and with no influence to press them upward these wages have remained extremely low.

Owing to these many conditions, apprenticeship in the sense of a broad and thorough training of the first-class workman has given place in many establishments and in many of the industries where it formerly prevailed to a so-called apprenticeship that trains in only a narrow range of work and fits only in some special line of skill. In such apprenticeship systems the period of training is much shorter than in the older form and very often no age restrictions are imposed. Such systems figure to quite an extent in the industries studied in this report, notably in the machine woodworking trades, in the manufacture of gas and electric fixtures, in some branches of boot and shoe manufacture, in garment making and in the manufacture of cigars.

The helper system is another important channel through which beginners enter the skilled trades. The helper takes various forms in the various trades, but in general he supplies the relatively unskilled help needed to carry forward the work of the skilled journeyman. In some industries, as in certain of the building trades, he appears as an unskilled mature laborer that rarely advances to the grade of a skilled worker. In others he is represented by a younger class, below the journeyman, called

juniors, improvers or helpers, who may be in regular succession to the skilled positions. In other cases, as in the machine shop, the helper is a "handy man" who performs odd jobs and in general the less skilled kinds of work such as finishing and filing. Such helpers have an opportunity to watch the operations of the journeyman and to become acquainted with his work, and where the conditions admit, the brighter and more progressive advance to the position of skilled workman.

One other general method under which skilled workers for the industries are recruited applies more or less to all industries in which great division of labor obtains. In such industries beginners are generally put at first at the simpler operations, and as they show ability and application are advanced to somewhat more difficult processes or the manipulation of less simple machines. This advancement may continue up to that particular point in the organization beyond which the capacities or ambition of the worker are not sufficient to carry him. This system of developing skilled workers obtains in most women's trades such as clothing, millinery and laundries, in the boot and shoe manufacture and in textile mills, and is found more or less combined with other systems of training in all other industries where much division of labor obtains.