Apprentice

“ Thus the relationship of the apprentice to the master is a twofold one, the apprentice being a pupil, but also a workman. It is the duty of the master to instruct the apprentice. For this purpose the apprentice is wholly entrusted to the master’s care, and must carry out the duties ordered by the master. ”

“ A shoemaker once engaged an apprentice. A short time after the apprenticeship began, the shoemaker asked the boy what he would call him in addressing him, "Oh, I would just call you master," answered the apprentice. "No," said the master, "you must call me master above all masters." ”

“ The apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts of boyhood, and his imagination rides cap-à-pie through the chambers of his brain, seeking some knightly quest in honour of that Fair Lady, the last but one of the girl apprentices to the dress-making upstairs. He inclines rather to street fighting against revolutionaries—because then she could see him from the window.
Jerking them back to the present comes the puffy little shop–walker, with a paper in his hand. The apprentice becomes extremely active. The shop-walker eyes the goods in hand. ”

“ An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France, [72] the master was responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for his moral training. ”

“ APPRENTICES
1. From many of these old-fashioned schools boys and girls were apprenticed. Connected with old parishes there are still funds for so placing out boys and girls.
2. All through the Middle Ages the only way by which a man could become a craftsman was by being first of all an apprentice, and the rules by which a lad was bound to a master were very strict. [Pg 184] Things did not alter much in this respect in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. An apprentice was always bound for seven years in the presence of magistrates. ”

“ Even today a careless apprentice system furnishes nearly all the training for what must become, in any really well-ordered system of society, one of the most learned and scrupulous of the higher professions. ”

“ The second son had bound himself apprentice to a miller. And when his time was up, his master said to him,
"As you have behaved yourself so well, I will give you an ass of a remarkable kind: he will draw no cart, and carry no sack."
"What is the good of him then?" asked the young apprentice.
"He spits out gold," answered the miller. "If you put a cloth before him and say, 'Bricklebrit,' out come gold pieces."
"That is a capital thing," said the apprentice, and, thanking his master, he went out into the world. ”

“ An apprentice who goes to a trade has to do as his master tells him. Look at it, we are apprentices, and we ought to become obedient to our masters, that we may become workmen who need not be ashamed to present ourselves before our masters, or before those who of right take cognizance of us. ”

“ An apprentice tries to hit his master a thump; well, if he be the weaker, why, he gets the worst of it; if he be the stronger, he has the best of it; he is turned out-of-doors, perhaps put into the cage,—and that is all. ”

“ Apprentices were taken in to assure an adequate supply of competent workers for the future. The standard indenture of an apprentice bound him to live in his master's house, to serve him diligently, obey reasonable commands, keep his master's secrets, protect him from injury, abstain from dice, cards and haunting of taverns, not marry, commit no fornication, nor absent himself without permission. ”

“ Without the shadow of a doubt the truth that there is—and alas, that there is—much truth in the outcry concerning the inferiority of training and capacity of the British artisan, may be very largely imputed to the relaxation and degeneration of the old system of apprenticeship; for, with all its faults, it did at least provide that a skilled master should become personally responsible for the training of the apprentice in his craft. ”

“ The first stage in the evolution in a given field may be called the apprentice stage. Just as physicians, lawyers, and in fact practitioners in all the professions and crafts trained their assistants in their establishments for the purpose of making them proficient in their daily work, so did merchants at this stage give apprentice training in commercial branches to their employees. ”

“ The length of the apprenticeship naturally differs in different occupations. At the end of it the apprentice becomes a full workman, and a member of his trade or guild. Now not only are the individual records of the apprentices for ability and industry strictly kept, and excellence distinguished by suitable distinctions, but upon the average of his record during apprenticeship the standing given the apprentice among the full workmen depends. ”

“ Such a course would not only render the apprentice an ornament to society but would fill his bosom with gratitude to his master, and naturally inspire him with a desire to repay the kindness of his benefactor. No master should take an apprentice unless prepared to discharge these duties. ”

“ His industry enabled him to master his profession rapidly. All his leisure moments were employed in study, thus preparing himself for a useful and glorious career through future life—leaving a bright example worthy the imitation of every apprentice in our country. ”

“ Such as the boy may be, he is made an apprentice. He needs no act, or, as you say in England, indenture. His contract has to be attested at the Prefecture of Police, Bureau of Passports, Section of Livrets. Formerly, it was the custom in France for the apprentice to be both fed and lodged by his master; but, as the patron seldom received money with him, he was mainly fed on cuffs. Apprenticeship in Paris, which is France, begins at ages differing according to the nature of the trade. If strength be wanted, the youth is apprenticed at eighteen, but otherwise, perhaps, at fourteen. ”

“ The crumbling edifice of apprenticeship is made to repose upon a basis of literary studies which positively unfit the young apprentice to enjoy the few benefits which that obsolete institution can still offer. ”

“ I always assisted in dyeing; I was not kept constantly to weaving and spinning; my master fitted me rather for a master than a journeyman.
And you instruct your apprentice in the same line?
Yes; we think it a scandal when an apprentice is loose if he is not fit for his business; we take pride in their being fit for their business, and we teach them all they will take.
[321] A clothier of Harmley, near Leeds, working with an apprentice, two hired journeymen and a boy, and giving some work out.
9. A Petition of Cotton Weavers [House of Commons Journals, 47 Geo. III, 1807, Feb. 26] , 1807. ”

“ With the development of gilds, regulations specifying the conditions of such apprenticeship began to be issued, e.g. the master craftsman might teach his art to as many members of his family as he pleased, but he could only have one other apprentice. ”

“ During that time the master agrees to see to it that the apprentice practices and becomes proficient in performing all the processes of the trade. The employer (master) is rewarded in that he secures the continuous service of the boy for the period of years upon the payment of little or no wages. Furthermore the apprentice when developed into a journeyman is likely to become a valuable employee. The apprentice is rewarded for his years of service by the practical experience which he has been permitted to secure in actual work with all the various processes involved in the trade. ”

“ Often the apprentices were received into the house of the master as their home, and according to legend and romance it was in order for the industrious and virtuous apprentice to marry the old man's daughter and succeed to the business. ”

“ If the master die before the apprentice attain the age of twenty-one years, the apprentice is equally bound as the servant of his deceased master's heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns—in fact, the apprentice is part of the deceased master's goods and chattels. Whoever, therefore, may carry on the trade, he is the servant of such person or persons until his manumission [Pg 172] is obtained by reaching his one-and-twentieth year. ”

“ I know no Greek or Latin word (I might venture, I believe, to assert that there is none) which expresses the idea we now annex to the word apprentice, a servant bound to work at a particular trade for the benefit of a master, during a term of years, upon condition that the master shall teach him that trade.
Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. ”

“ Item, and that you instruct and teach apprentices; and that none take, or employ, any man’s apprentice when their time of apprenticeship is not completed, under the pain of paying Twenty Pounds, the one-half to the Incorporation, one-fourth to the Lodge, and one-fourth to Saint Thomas’s Altar, to say mass to their Soul. ”

“ The apprentice has in most cases first to go through a course of menial drudgery which teaches him nothing — unless it be how to abuse other apprentices when he comes to have any under him — which uselessly consumes his time, and which not seldom impairs his self-respect. The pupil of the Technical Institute, child of poor people though he be, enters at once upon the exercise and development of his natural abilities. ”

“ We learn arts and professions by apprenticeships, that is, much after the fashion we learned walking, or stitching, or fire-making, or love-making at home—by example, precept, and practice combined. Apprentices at anything, from ditching, basket-work, or watch-making, to merchant-trading, legislation, or surgery, submit either to a nominal or an actual apprenticeship. They see other men do these things, they desire to do the same, and they learn to do so by watching how, and when, and asking, or guessing why each part of the business is done ”

“ Seven is the number of the Entered Apprentice as it relates to the seven liberal arts and sciences, and these are the powers with which the Entered Apprentice must labor before he is worthy to go onward into the more elevated and advanced degrees. ”

“ Where he is an energetic and conscientious man, the apprentice will doubtless be thoroughly well looked after, will be taught his profession, and his lot will compare favourably with that of an apprentice in any other trade or profession going. ”

“ An upholder was chiding his apprentice because he was not notable enough at his work, and had not his nails and hammer in readiness when he should use them, telling him, when he was an apprentice he was taught to have his nails at his fingers’ ends. ”

“ So far as the professional life of the smack apprentice goes—his treatment at sea, his food, his clothes, and the like—it is difficult to guess, having regard to the unavoidable roughness and hardship of his calling, how his position is to be improved. ”

“ No one might practise any “art or mystery” who had not properly served an apprenticeship to it. To maintain a requisite balance no one was allowed to keep more than three apprentices without employing a journeyman. ”

“ Presumably, too, most of them had apprentices in turn; but here the surviving information is quite skimpy.
Journeymen (craftsmen who had finished their apprentice training but had not yet gone into business as their own masters) were in good demand and apparently in good supply. ”

“ First-No man shall work as a maker or finisher, unless he has served an apprenticeship of seven years to what is called a "fair master."
Second-To be a fair master, and entitled, according to the rules of the trade, to take an apprentice, he must have manufactured his own Hats, seven years prior to the taking, or otherwise have served a fair seven years' apprenticeship himself to the trade. ”

“ According to his standing as an apprentice a young man is assigned his place as a first, second, or third grade worker. Of course only men of unusual ability pass directly from apprenticeship into the first grade of the workers. The most fall into the lower grades, working up as they grow more experienced, at the --periodical regradings. These regradings take place in each industry at intervals corresponding with the length of the apprenticeship to that industry, so that merit never need wait long to rise, nor can any rest on past achievements unless they would drop into a lower rank. ”

“ During the involuntary period of human consciousness, the Entered Apprentice in the Great Lodge was man, who labored with these rough blocks, seeking the tools and the power with which to true them . As he evolves down through the ages, he gains the tools and cosmically passes on to the degree of Fellow Craft where he trues his ashlar in harmony with the plans upon the Master's tracing board. ”

“ Ten Pounds to be paid to each apprentice, either during or at the expiration of the apprenticeship, at the discretion of the Company.
3. The Freedom of the Company to be presented to each apprentice on satisfactory proof being given of his efficiency in the craft and of good behaviour during his apprenticeship. ”

“ The work is graduated according to his ability to make progress, and care is taken to so arrange his course that he shall be taught thoroughly all the fundamental principles of his trade. The ordinary apprentice works so that he will be able to fulfil the orders that are given to his master. The consequence of this is that two ideas exist, the apprentice having the desire to learn a trade, his master desiring to profit by his work. ”