The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-04-23
THE IMPOSSIBLE APPRENTICE.

a Stock Argument Against Labor
Unions Utterly Destroyed.
Much has been said and written as to the
reasons why the average American youth
is not SO prominent as he ought to be in
American workshops and trades. He has
been declared the victim Of trades unions
and alien handicraft, and his absence from
national industries not so much a matter
of volition as of tyranny. All this in GER
tain instances and localities may be more
or less true, but that it wholly accounts
for the missing American apprentice no
man conversant with the details OF
the situation can co~nscientiously assent to.
The fact is, that while our native youths are
both mentally and physically fitted for any
and every branch of trade, they have a
keener eye for immediate returns OF labor,
rather than those obtainable III the earlier
processes of apprenticeship. In certain
s~pecialties, where a few weeks familiarity
with a certain machine or process lnsures a
| rapid rise in wages, there is no lack or ap-
| plicants. TIL candidates are, however,
missing where patient and thorough shop
education are insisted OF as the preliminary
of being an efficient mechanic
or artisan. It is here where the
| shoe pinches, and we venture to say
| that the boys who would consent to q full
4 i VI QBR4 AOAOOoAA 60 49, S
years ago are by no means so many as is sup
| posed. Where, as in a machine shop or a
| foundry, there is more of ~perspiratlon and
grease than of glory, it Is the experience OF
many employers that the average youth,
| after the first blister on his hand or grease
spot on his linen, is more anxious to vacate
| his position than he is to stay there. This IS
seemingly paradoxical with the national
| character for intelligence and energy, but
! ceases to be so when the causes are under
| stood.
The rising generation shows an aversion to
| the discipline and patience essential to the
mastery of a mechanical trade. The sons OF
well-to-do and e~nterprisirg parents, as every
railway man knows, are, In very many cases,
more eager to don a brakeman's cap and
| turn a wheel on an express train than 70
work under more wholesome restrictions IN
the mechanical departments. 1t is also OBJ
| servable in other forms of bread winning,
| where the lighter and less tedious forms OF
service are never without more applicants
| than vacancies.
We are a democratic people and not sup
| posed to underrate the dignity of I'M kind
| of honest labor, skilled or otherwise, but the
fact is we do, excepting where it has passed
the ~perspiring stage into wealth and success.
In this case we indorse or appreciate results,
but lack in love for The process. If the
| rising generation is anxious to secure the
| plums without cultivating the tree, their
mistake is excusable on the ground
of their education. There are more
boys anxious to "get there" than to go
through the process of doing so. Again, 1t
is TO be remembered, that the rougher forms
of skilled labor are additionally allotted to
others less careful of their linen and not SO
local in their nativity. Time, Of course, will
change this, but until it does there will be
a genuine, though unspoken, rebellion
against the choice of any trades not up TO
what are recognized as genteel standards.
1t is true that modern Industries are ac-
| commodating themselves to those condi-
lions. The specialist or simply automatic
mechanic, whose apprenticeship is not worth
the name, is an escape from what would be
manifestly disastrous if old time apprentice.
ship was insisted upon. The all-around and
thorough-trained mechanic is perhaps yet to
be among the missing in the next genera
ton. He will not be the necessity he once was,
but be the gravitation of trade conditions
what it may, the man who has been discip,
lined and trained BY a few years OF practlcal
apprenticeship will be of the more value as
| the article gets rarer.