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American Apprenticeship and Industrial Education (Columbia University Studies in the Social Sciences, No 216)
American Apprenticeship and Industrial Education - Columbia University Studies in the Social Sciences, No 216 Author:Paul H. Douglas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the necessity as well as the opportunity of providing for home needs by domestic industry. Manufactures of cotton and wool, and a few other staples, were establi... more »shed by the conclusion of the War, and fostered by a series of tariffs beginning in 1816. But certainly down to the twenties the major part of our industries were still organized essentially as they had been during the colonial period. " The master worked side by side with his journey-man and his apprentice, and was not sharply distinguished from them by either his earnings or his social position," 1 It was not until the booming industry of the 2o's and the 3o's and the springing up of such mill towns as Pawtucket, Lowell and Lawrence, that America experienced her first taste of the real factory system. The suddenness of the change is indicated by the chorus of protests in the late twenties. That period witnessed for the first time regularly organized work- ingmen's parties, a labor press, and such well-known leaders as Fanny Wright, Robert Dale Owen, the Evans brothers, and Seth Luther. But while the movement of the twenties was very real and while the factory system steadily gained ground in the North, especially in Southern New England from 1840 to 1860, it was not until after the Civil War that its period of greatest growth began.2 2. Effect Upon Status of Apprentices The effects of the industrial revolution upon children should be most carefully noted. It is quite clear that it debased the conditions of the children in industry in two ways: —(a) It divested apprenticeship proper of its educational features both trade and civic, (b) it added children to industry who were not even nominally apprentices at all, but merely child laborers. Apprenticeship and child labor had been synonymous terms; they now became separat...« less