The Dominion THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1921. A NEED OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 212, 2 June 1921, Page 4

The Dominion THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1921. A NEED OF THE DAY

Good craftsmanship is a national as well as an individual asset, anct on the broadest grounds every possible encouragement ought to be given to those who are endeavouring to extend and popularise facilities for the training of trade apprentices. Of late there have been promising indications that this veiy important question is beginning to command something of the attention it deserves. For instance, in his report to the Technical College Board of Governors on Monday evening, the Director (Mr. J. H. Howell) mentioned that the Kailways Department- had decided to reward with a small addition to pay any apprentice in its service who, in his own time, gained a technical school diploma or certificate of proficiency in his trade. It is undoubtedly sound policy to offer boys an immediate incentive to make good use of the time spent at technical classes, and the example set by the Railways Department is one that employers who have not already taken similar action on their own account might copy with advantage to themselves as well as to their apprentices. In commending the Department for what it had done, Mr. Howell urged that it should go a step further and allow its apprentices some time off during the day to attend technical classes. He was able to point out that this policy has been adopted in America and elsewhere with highly satisfactory results. Hitherto employers in this country have in most, if. not all, cases refused to allow their apprentices time off during the week to receive technical instruction, but it is now reported that a proposal on these lines is to be submitted to the Wellington Builders’ Association at its next general meeting. If the association devises a workable scheme it will give a lead worthy of being widely followed. As Mr;. Howell showed in referring to what has been accomplished in America, by private railway companies which maintain their own apprentice schools, the matter is well beyond the-experimental stage. Some safeguards, of course, are necessary. It would be unreasonable to ask employers in any trade to allow their apprentices time off during the working week without providing satisfactory guarantees that the time will be well spent.. The payment of apprentices with some reference to their proficiency suggests itself as one means of inducing them to apply themselves to their technical studies. Wilful refusal to make use of facilities for instruction no doubt ought to be visited with positive penalties, and in extreme cases with dismissal. . Under the right conditions, however, most boys will avail themselves very readily of the advantages of a sound technical training. A great improvement in methods of apprentice training—an improvement for which there is unquestion- i ably plenty of room in this country—offers one obvious means of quickening and invigorating our backward industrial life. Apprentice training, of course, is very far from covering the whole ground, but the training of craftsmen to the highest possible pitch of proficiency has an essential place amongst the measures that are needed to tone up both the economic and social life of the Dominion. As matters stand, good craftsmanship is at a discount. Not only are unskilled and semi-skilled workers unduly favoured in the matter of wages as compared with men who have spent years in mastering a trade, but in many trades highly skiljed craftsmen find themselves little if at all better paid than fel-low-workers of relatively . inferior skill and productive power. The tendency at present is to demand that the wages paid to the most competent workers in a given occupation shall be made a universal standard. It develops inevitably out of these conditions that standards of craftsmanship in many cases are declining, that industries which depend on craftsmanship make slow and hampered growth, and that the number of boys who become trade apprentices instead of entering blind-alley occupations is very much smaller than it ought to be. No great sagacity is needed to perceive that these conditions work out in loss to all concerned. _ If ability and skill were recognised, fostered, and rewarded, the whole community would benefit because there would he. a stimulus to efficiency which at present is almost entirely lacking. A great part of the remedy for what is at fault in tho j economic organisation of this country would be found in tho widest possible application of a system of payment by results. It is a libel on the Dominion and its people to sugigest that this system would pcnalI ise any section of its workers. There ‘is not the slightest doubt that if it became the/rule instead of the exception to encourage good t.radesmanship by substituting adequate incentives for the levelling-down policy favoured by organised La-

hour, the “living wage” about which so much is heard nowadays would soon become merely a foundation on which to build an ever-improv-ing standard of comfort for the whole population. Until the problem of reorganising the economic life of the Dominion is attacked comprehensively, a limit must be set to expectations based upon an improvement in the system of apprentice training. In itself, however, such an improvement is greatly to be desired. The growing interest manifested in this question is a promising indication of revolt against a condition of affairs in which the productive energies of the Dominion are deadened and repress; ed. Clearly also it must contribute in a useful degree to a solution of the total problem if as many boys as possible are induced to take <ip skilled trades and are given the best training that resources will permit.