Connecticut western news., 1882-05-24
DEARTH OF GOOD wORKMEN.
A Lack of Proper Apprenticeship Legislation Leading to Vicious System of Sub-Contraction and Poor Work.


 System of Sub-Contraction and
 Poor Work.
 [From the New York Evening Post.l
 The strikes which have recently oc- cured among almost all classes of workmen have not been the only trou- bles with which builders have had to contend of late. Chief among the causes of complaint has been the cus- tom of Jumping" work-that is, divid- ing contract into half 8 dozen parts. For instance a carpenter receives con. tract for doing the work on house, the specifi ication calling for beams, floors, partitions, stairs, sashes, doors and trim-all the woodwork in the building. In former years every part of this work except the stairs would have been done by one set of men, and the material would have been prepared in one shop. The new way of proceed ing is to sub-let different parts of the work-the beams to one man, the floors to another, the studding or partitions to another, the doors to another, and so on. In this way the chief contractor can tell immediately what profit he has made on the operation, and can engage at once upon another operation of the kind, The result is that the sub-contrao only aim is to do the work in the cheap. est manner that will satisfy the original contractor he cares nothing about making reputation, for he never comes into contact with the architects or owners, and if he does, he is bound by hls contract to secrecy concerning the sub-contract. Many specifications for bid sub,contracting, and for that req son the owner or architects do not dis cover that a contract has been sslumped" until some trouble occurs between the contractor and sub- contractor.
 The chief cause for the dumping <" system is that. owing to the disappear. ance of apprentices, 8 good workman in any trade is becoming rarity. This leads to the dumping system in two ways: first, there are few workmen who know how to do more than one or two things second, a vast army of inferior workmen are drifting about who cannot command good wages, and consequently have to work upon the cheapest class of work, and those are the only men whom the sub-contractor can afford to employ. According to old master carpenters and masons, the disappear ance of apprentices accounts for the new state of affairs. One of the best carpenters in the city, who owns his shop and does large business. said:
 "lt IS scarcely an exaggeration to say that the race of good workmeu is dying out, and that were it not for the of foreign workmen we should be at loss for men to do even the commonest jobs. The best foreign Workmen do not come here at all, find ing enough to do at home, so that those we do find are not such workmen as we had twenty years ago; but at least they are better than the men who have failed to learn trade here. The newspapers say that men do not know their trades nowadays because there is no such thing IS apprenticeship, and the reason we nave no apprentices is that the trades unions will not allow more than one or two apprentices in each shop for fear of ioo much competition in the future.
 s"Thefe was an attempt some years ago % restryct the number of apprentices, md believe that in Chicago the boss nasons are allowed but two apprentices whether they employ five men or fifty. But all such rules are useless here. be- 'ause it is not in the shopowner's inter- 9st to have any apprentices at all. There is no such thing as 8 legal ap- orenticeship bond between boy more han sixteen years of age and an employer consequently boy who is 'aught something useful in a shop will cave when he can get half dollar more week in some other place. A boy will not stay in shop for more than a year without pay we have to pay them for allowing themselves to be taught a trade. As boys are usually not worth their salt in a carpenters shop, we do without them. I have not had a ooy for years and will not have any un- Ill the law frames an apprenticeship ndenture which will ensure me some 'eturn for the trouble of teaching ap- orentices. The consequence is that ooys pick up 8 trade in superficial way Instead of learning it. Among the plumbers it is somewhat different, be- 'ause every plumber has helper who, oeginging as a boy, soon learns the rade if he is bright"
 "I Can and I WiIl.o