The Palatka daily news. (Palatka, Fla.) 1884-1888, 1886-11-04
THE APPRENTICE.
A GLASS OF WORKERS THAT HAVE
ALMOST CEASED TO EXIST.

Steam and Iron Replace Flesh and Blood
Far May Be-The Study of
Trade Rendered Unnecessary-The Craft
of Crispin-Results.
Ono of the most fascinating works of art
in existence is, to my fancy, at least, Ho-
garth's series of plates depicting the con-
trasted careers of the idle and the industrious
apprentices. When was little boy an old
relative of mine owned an original Hogarth,
pigskin-covered tome, bigger and heavier
than myself, and used to ponder over the
apprentice pictures without ever finding
them stale. They are still fresh and new to
me, so perennial is their human nature, SO
keen and Just their satire and SO bright their
wit.
/ was looking over them the other day
when it struck me that they were rapidly be-
coming reminders of n lost condition or
things, and that by the next generation or so
the class to which their heroes belong will
have quite ceased to exist l had that day
been through great manufacturing estab-
Iishment where steam and iron replace flesh
and blood as far as they may be replaced by
things that cannot think. There We're ma
chimes for making one part of a shoe and
another, machines for putting the parts to-
SethcT, and machines for finishing them.
About all the men had to do was to feed the
machines with leather, thread, steel wire and
wood, all of which they gulped down, chewed
up and spat ont ready for use. And 50 con-
tagions IS example that the men themselves
worked quite as automatically rs the mech
Cnislns they served, and were as stolid and
cxprcssiCnlcss. The only notable difference,
it seemed To me, was that the machines Were
bright ard clean and well fed and their slaves
were not
BUT WORSE ZOE THE MEN.
Tho owner of the establishment, himself a
workman who signs his checks with Il hand
call0JIse-i bcyord the art of the manicure to
soften. and who las Il stcop from years of dcvo-
tion to the laIstone and the strap, had great
deal 20 say about his trade He was proud
OF its progress, but sorry, too. The rucchani-
cal improvements in it were better for the
public, he said, but worse for the men. y
real shoemaker was now rs hard to find as a
Purse of gold. A few fingered hero and
there, working in their own little shops, but
did it under every disadvantage, for they had
to compete with an enemy that neither ate
nor paid rent. The craft of Crispin-the
craft which tuneful Hans Sachs made one of
honor-had become mere days labor. Men
no longer make shoes, but helped their ma
chimes to make parts of shoes. The shoe
makers apprentice, that merry, impudent
rogue whom the wits and farceurs of the past
made famous, has ceased to exist. He is now
simply dirty little errand boy, who learns
about the shops nothing except to be man
in vanity and vice before he has ceased to be
a child.
And what is true of shoemaking is true Of
nine out of ten other trades. The perfection
of machinery has rendered the study of a
trade unnecessary. The wise men who in
vent these labor-saving contrivances do all
the thinking the workman once had to do,
and while their ingenuity is benefit to the
many, it is definite injury to the few. The
trade which Hogarth's apprentices were put
to was not, it is true, mechanical one.
They were indentured to a mercer. But the
system which is nearly dead in the workshops
is quite extinct in the shops devoted to the re-
tail trades. The army that battles for bread
is too numerous to render it difficult for an
employer to pick such services as he wishes,
and lie no longer assumes the responsibility
of hiring it with bed and board for a term of
yeaTs.-Alfred Trumble in New York Mo-