Delaware state journal. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1870-1883, 1881-01-06
WITH sUPPLEM EMIT.
Lack of Proper Traiuing for Earn
iup m Living

Ing n Living.
There Is something radically wrong with /
he syeiem--!f we have any system t
'ince apprenticeship was practically abol-
shed-of training men for work in this Z
We do not know that II is
peculiar TO our country but the manifesto
lion Of it here is that which specially CON- {
cerns US. We have made, we claim, Won
derful progress in education since the
days of our great grandfathers, but how {
has it been with teaching men how to
earn an honest living2 Take what
trade you please and you will find
that its best workmen owe their
superiority, not to the system in which
they were trained but to their Owl greater
intelligence or application, and nothing
could show how limited is the number of
such 30 web as did the last panic. During
all that time of depression, when thou
sands of honest workmen walked the
streets seeking any means to earn their
bread by labor, but few shops were
wholly closed, though not few of those
kept open were running at no profit,
their employers. Have you ever thought
who were the workmen retained from
amongst the many turned off, or what was
the rule of selectionY ALL other things
being equal it is perhaps true that the
married men with others dependant upon
them for support were given the prefer
ence over the unmarried men, but this
was not the guiding rule by any means
The men retained were those known by
their employers to be the best workmen,
the most skilled artisans. Many shops
their owners would otherwise have beef
tempted to close wers kept open in order
that these might not be scattered and lost
80 that they could not be had again wheu
reviving business made their services
needed.
OF course many fairly good workmen
lost employment, but very few of the best
were thrown out and many men who have
after months or years of absencs returned
to their old shops have found the same old
fellows there they left there, and know
they have never been away. They know
too that if some nice piece OF work is to
be done that il is these steady old hands
who are assigned to the task and not the
ones who constitute the average and the
majority of the shop men. If they choose
nla far init h..
future to know who will be in due time
the successors OF these "old reliabes -
1t will not be the men next them in
age or length Of service probably, bul
most likely those brightest among thu
apprentices who watch the more difficult
work of such journeymen with eager
interest, and who gradually and almost
imperceptibly come to be called on more
and more by them to assist in the hard OIL
"ticklish" jobs, while the apprentices
who hammer awag never SO industriously,
but with their minds fixed on the time the
next whistle shall blow, will grow up int.
the sort of workmen who are first to drol
out when times are hard, and last to come
back as times grow better
But though every skilled mechanic viii
admit that this is true, aud the NOR
skilled he is the quicker will be his admis
sion, it is not half 90 true of men witt
trades as it is among those who have n,
trades. We leave out the professions b.
courtesy called learned, over crowded a
they all are by half-taught and undif
ciplined incompetents, because youn
lawyers, preachers and doctors appear t
soar in a region inaccessible to such
commonplace consideration as how /
make living. If their minds eve
dropped to that sordid level, half of thef
would straightway abandon the profession
which they imagine adorn them. even
they cannot reciprocste the favor an
adorn their professions. But how abot
the large mass of less ambitious me
who have sought to make the
living otherwise than by trained manue
labor? There is place for th
merchant in the economy of huns
he properly performs his function
gathering with taste, tact and judGmei
what the many want, and without his a
would not know where to get, but no
many of the spruce young men who vie
the yardstiek or stand behind counters III
training themselves 10 become skill,
merchants Perhaps not one in At.
Then take the bookkeepers, Why, in Il
language of the deaf man in the stor
''the woods Is full Of them" aud an advt
tisement for one will bring almost nut
berless applications;yet bow many of SUI
applicants have in their heads the theor
and at their finger ends the practice, of Il
art of bookkeeping NJ. one in dozsi
In fact merchants and manufacturers a
usually SO on the look out for really fir
class book keepers that one is rarely out
place long. "@ ..--.=-.
And 80 it is in all things. Egerywhe
superabundance of hsH-trained me
everywhere scarcity Of thoroughly co.
petent ones; always, as SONS one L
said, room at the top" or coul
allowance must be made for varying tsleI
but il is not differences of intellect,
ability TO which the evil we are criticisi
is due. The difference batween individu
under existing systems is due chiefly
difference OF interest in and Applicant
to their trade or business by tho
learning them; but, back of til
since these differences always v
be, is some radical defect 10 our system
training men for work. We have no
sire to antagonizs our boosted school s
tenn, though half its so-called impro
ments encourage the haf-baked cordit
we are criticising, but we do say tha
neither does nor promises to do any tn
to remedy the deficient training of
people in methods Of earning living,
it is high time that some Of the zeal
enthusiasm which has gone into the bu
ing up of the common schools, was direo
toward the problem we are considering
An important Chinese enterprise
about to be started. The China d