Industrial training

“ Unable to compete with the low prices of European or Indian manual labor, we leave it to our machinery, and expect our workingman to enable us to enhance the value of our articles by the helping presence of industrial brains and knowledge, so important and generally better paid than manual labor alone, and for that result we look to industrial training as a means. ”

“ Industrial Training in the United States.—Industrial training first began to be offered in the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century by means of a number of evening continuation schools. These were established through philanthropy in the larger cities, and included the Cooper Union and the Mechanics’ Institute in New York ”

“ In the final analysis, the problem of industrial training narrows down to the skilled industrial trades. Approximately 22 per cent of the total number of American workers in the city are employed in skilled manual occupations. ”

“ The members of the Survey Staff were, however, of the opinion that through the system of electives in the junior high school, industrial training of a more general type, made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to the commoner industrial processes, would be of considerable benefit to those boys who, on the basis of their own selection or that of their parents, are likely to enter industrial pursuits. ”

“ Increased use of the public vocational schools through the co-operation of local manufacturers. This is being done very fortunately in Worcester, Bridgeport and some other cities.
2. Introduce new workers, men and women, into industry through these schools.
3. Arrange for the training of present mechanics and others in existing workrooms in connection with regular production, and by more scientific procedure than heretofore. ”

“ Our graduate apprentices, adjusters and tool setters have been so well trained that they have always been sought for by competitive concerns. Since the war, and especially during the past six or eight months, it has become increasingly necessary to develop the training of employees to the greatest extent. Where formerly help might be obtained who had, at least, some knowledge of machines and shop practice, it is now necessary to take help who have absolutely no knowledge of factory work and teach them to become skilled. ”

“ Only regular factory production which must pass inspection is used for instruction.
In regard to instructors, they have taken a man from the tool room who is a mechanic and a good teacher. He can handle any and all of the machines and has the ability to tell what he knows in a clear way that is readily understood.
Most of the students in the training room at present have been hired from outside but as it is becoming better known among the men, the laborers are applying for admission in rapidly increasing numbers. ”

“ It is not to be denied, upon the other hand, that technical schools and special courses of commercial education might greatly enhance our capabilities, if care were taken to prevent them from usurping too far the practical business or industrial training which seems to be the secret of our success thus far. In the more and more strenuous competition which is evidently waiting us, our manufacturers, exporters and trade representatives abroad will need to be provided with a variety of information which cannot be acquired except by academic instruction. ”

“ If the demand for technical instruction is to be fully satisfied, a great part of our existing system of education must be reconstructed, and the training provided in our several schools must be made a more fitting preparation for industrial work than it is at present.
Schools in which the course of instruction is not specialized with a view to any particular industry, but is so arranged as to form a general preparation for manufacturing or other trade pursuits, are often spoken of as professional, technical, or trade schools ”

“ The opinion that the company is doing a disinterested thing in training new operators has led some to believe that the wage scale for learners could be made very low. One way to help a man to act like a gentleman is to dress him as such and treat him as far as possible as such. The same holds true with operators in training. The fact that they are rated well and trained by the best of mechanics, on the best of tools, in a shop with good surroundings, means much in the final success of industrial training. ”

“ As a contribution to industrial training for the war emergency, Pratt Institute is conducting day and evening courses in Machine Work, which have been especially organized to serve the present need for increased productive efficiency in this country’s machine shops. These courses are designed to aid ambitious machine shop workers of limited development, including machine operators, bench hands and machinists’ helpers, who wish to extend and broaden their practical ability as a means to personal advancement in the trade, increased earning power and fuller service to production. ”

“ And here is the mistake of those who would degrade a manual training school into a manufacturing establishment. The fact should never be lost sight of for an instant that the product of the school should be, not the polished article of furniture, not the perfect piece of machinery, but the polished, perfect boy. The acquisition of industrial skill should be the means of promoting the general education of the pupil; the education of the hand [351] should be the means of more completely and more efficaciously educating the brain.... ”

“ They do not assume to teach a worker a whole trade in the brief time available. They do teach him by the methods of the training department how to master one process or one machine in a few weeks or a few days. These 100 factories are spending, or preparing to spend, at the rate of $1,500,000 solely in this business of intensive training of new workers. This training investment is not an expense, as the training is immediately upon production and the product from the training room is expected to equal that in the factory. ”

“ His experience is generally confined to some single process, and only a few of the operatives require anything more than low-grade skill. Nor, as a rule, will the employer undertake any systematic education of his workmen, when the mobility of labor permits of no guarantee that he will reap the benefit of such efforts, and the modern industrial plant is poorly adapted to supplying the necessary theoretical training for experts. ”

“ The machine department trains fifty boys in the day course and under normal conditions the boy graduates after 4,800 hours of study, seventy-five per cent. being trade practice and twenty-five per cent. academic study. At present many boys leave before the completion of their course to enter local munition factories. These boys are in great demand and even after a few months of training are found extremely useful in those factories.
The boys who complete their studies and receive their diplomas are largely sought for tool room work. ”

“ As industrial history and technique are taught in the schools, in effect they bind the children to the current industrial practice and to the current conditions. They stifle imagination and discourage the concept that industry is an evolving process. The effect of technical training in the German continuation schools (and the tendency is the same in our own industrial education courses) is to teach the children that the methods and processes as they are carried forward in the shop are right. No question of their validity is raised in the school. ”

“ A really efficient workman must be to-day an intelligent man who has had good technical training in addition to thorough common school, and perhaps even higher training. To meet this situation the industrial schools began a further development; they established distinct Trade Schools for the thorough training of better class artisans, and at the same time they sought to preserve for the purposes of general education, such of the simpler processes of elementary trade learning as were best suited therefor. ”

“ THE GRATON & KNIGHT MANUFACTURING COMPANY Worcester, Mass.
We do not maintain a regular separate school for training the employees on our business because of the fact that we have such a large variety of trades that it would not be practical for us. We do, however, maintain a training system for the employees in our various departments and have men assigned for such work in the departments. ”

“ This shop has an enrollment of 125 boys, who are trained in a three-year course to become expert all-round mechanics.
In addition to this, two of our largest shops, of 250 men each, have during the past year and a half conducted special training courses for green men on the more elementary work of toolmaking. The purpose of these courses is to train men who have had no mechanical experience to the point where they can be used to free more expert men from all routine and simple work. These men are started on a lathe grinder or milling machine. ”

“ We expect to take one good man from our own plant as an instructor, and we are also in communication with an instructor from a college in a Western State whom we may have in direct charge of this work should he prove to be the proper person.
At the present time we have in our factory about 75 female employees, on Lathes, Milling Machines, Grinders, Finishing Gauges, Lapping, etc., also inspectors, timekeepers and stock chasers. ”

“ Men in all stages of experience, ambitious apprentices, unskilled clerks, drivers, porters, etc., who wish to enter the local munition factories come to these classes.
As an instance of extremes we may take the case of a painter of sixty who entered the Marlin Rockwell Corporation on machine work after two seasons of study; and the case of an experienced toolmaker taking advantage of the equipment to learn some new operations so as to fit himself for a higher grade of work. Both [Pg 9] men made good. Machinists take the continuation course so that they may qualify as toolmakers. ”

“ This necessary specialisation and detail training has108 large consequences for the growth of technology as well as for its custody and transmission. It follows that a large and widely diversified industrial scheme is impossible except in a community of some size,—large enough to support a number and variety of special occupations. In effect, substantial gains in industrial insight and proficiency can apparently be worked out only through such close and sustained attention to a given line of work as can be given only within the lines of a specialised occupation. ”

“ There are advanced technicums for such specializations as mining, medicine, veterinary medicine, and industrial chemistry. All schools include courses in Marxism-Leninism, higher mathematics, and physical education in addition to the courses of specialization. Also on the technical-vocational level are six-month training courses that are organized by factories, cooperatives, and other enterprises. These courses are designed to improve the workers' skills or to retrain workers for other areas of specialization. ”

“ We use our regular production to train the students, and as it must pass 100 per cent. inspection, we emphasize quality and not quantity.
We find the best class of workers comes from those between twenty-one and forty years of age, with, of course, exceptions.
We not only teach the new employees the mechanical operations, but also give them “Health and Safety” lectures, and show them pictures of many ways one can become injured if they do not use precaution while working around machinery. ”

“ Men on these machines throughout the factory are semi-skilled in their use and are mostly on repetition work. Take the best of them and train them in the Training Department, or in the tool room, and replace them by new men in the factory.
Results. This method results in: First, enabling the skilled tool or diemaker to handle more work than if he had to do all the machine and layout work; second, increasing the output per machine, for it stops the time lost through the machine’s being idle and the tools being separated from the machine. ”

“ We have found that there is not a sufficient number of experienced toolmakers to meet the demand and the only way is to have the women help out, and we have a school for this purpose, also have been teaching them to operate production machines. ”

“ Until recently it has been our plan to train new employees in the section to which they were assigned, upon the machines and work with which they were to be regularly connected. The various shop departments have instructors picked from the best workmen to demonstrate machines and their operation, when necessary. ”

“ At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not purchase additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to a local manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training foremen and specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy (Massachusetts) Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part of the instruction given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. 64 This company is giving instruction to a selected group of workers under pay for a full industrial day of ten hours. A night shift of training for eleven hours is also given to another group of men. ”