RELATION OF TRADES-UNIONS TO APPRENTICES.

This article focuses on the relationship between trade unions and apprentices in the U.S. As one of the chief causes of opposition to trade unions is their supposed influence in limiting the number of apprentices, it is important to investigate the question as to the extent of this influence. The whole tendency of modern business methods towards the destruction of the entire apprenticeship system is proving too strong to be resisted. Trades become more and more subdivided. It becomes unprofitable for an employer to teach all parts of a business to a workman. While the latter, in view of the frequent changes in machinery and in business methods, stands more in need of general intelligence and manual dexterity than of a minute knowledge of each of the fifty or more subdivisions of an industry. It is in the gradually lessening number of trades, where apprenticeship is still practicable and necessary for good workmanship unless trade schools can accomplish the same end, that some of the American trade unions demand a thorough apprenticeship. Of the 11 local Typographical Unions in New York State, investigated in 1886 by the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 8 reported some restriction of apprentices.