Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 3

Boys

page 130

Boys.

A « burning question » in the Trade everywhere is that of the employment of boy labor. The hostile attitude assumed by the trade unions to the employment of boys is no surprise when the state of many of the printing offices in the colony is considered. Skilled workmen are in the minority, and are not wanted; the staff chiefly consists of untrained and half-trained lads with little or no ambition or incentive to study their trade; they are engaged on the poorest material; the work is « slopped up » and « rushed out; » the most egregious blunders are perpetrated; and when a customer orders a good piece of work—something original and striking—all the ornaments and borders in the office are laid under contribution, and a job is produced worthy only of a place in a Gallery of Horrors.

It is easy to account off-hand for so undesirable a state of things. « Greedy masters, » says the trade-unionist. « Incompetent foreman, » says the lad's friends, when after five or six years the boy has developed into a useless journeyman. « Stupid » or « lazy boys » says the unhappy overseer, whose raven locks are whitening under the mental strain of trying to teach a shopful of apprentices. One of these views is set forth in the following paragraph in a letter from our Christchurch correspondent, shut out, owing to lack of space some months ago. Writing of the proposed Trades and Labor Council, he said:

While on this subject I might suggest that the Council, if established, should take into consideration, when the opportune time arrives, the important question of compelling masters, by Act of Parliament if necessary, to teach apprentices thoroughly every branch of whatever trade they are apprenticed to, with liability to damages in case of careless teaching. How often do we hear of a master discharging a man for incompetence in some branch of the printing trade! Yet in numbers of cases it cannot be said to be the man's fault that he is not a good tradesman; for in all probability he has never been thoroughly taught his trade, and has never had an opportunity of « picking it up. » It often happens, too, that the employer who discharges a man on this account has his office filled with boys whom he is simply teaching to snatch type to suit his own convenience, quite indifferent as to whether he is turning his boys out good tradesmen. Then when he gets an incompetent workman he lays the blame on the man, quite overlooking the fact that it is himself and such as he who are most at fault.

Neither of the three theories above will account for the evil; nor will all three combined, though there is no doubt a germ of truth in all of them. Our correspondent inclines to the first solution; and with all respect to his suggestion, we believe it would be absolutely inoperative. When an evil is found to exist, the cry in the colonies is not « Reform, » but « Legislate. » And there is a fatal fascination about legislation. To administer the laws is dry and tedious and thankless—to devise new ones is a delightful recreation; hence we are encumbered with a thousand statutes, containing tens of thousands of provisions, which no one can remember or attempt to obey. As regards the law relating to master and apprentice, if there were already no special legislation on the subject, the ordinary law of contracts should be quite sufficient in case of a breach of the indenture on either side.

That the greed of the master printer is any way in excess of that of the average man we doubt—if it is, the unhappy tradesman has mistaken his vocation, and must suffer the pains of Tantalus. That incompetence is a general characteristic of foremen and overseers may also be fairly questioned. That boys are often stupid and obstinate, and with rare exceptions indolent, few will deny; and it is also a melancholy fact that many waste the best years of their lives in learning (after a fashion) trades for which they are wholly unfitted. The primary cause of the evil lies outside the Trade altogether. It is in the all-pervading tendency to « cheapen » everything required. The customer who will call at every office in the city, and waste the valuable time of every printer, to save eighteenpence on a thousand billheads—who will haggle over the lowest figure offered, and then—the mean knave—demand a « discount » when he pays, if it please him to pay at all—HE is the prime cause of all the evils that afflict the trade. It is HE who fills the office with flimsy paper and evil-smelling printing ink at 3d a pound; it is HE who keeps the wretched comps sweating by gaslight in stuffy offices on sultry summer nights, and who has ramshackle presses running on worn-out types Sabbath days as well as week-days; who drives good workmen into the streets « inspecting the public buildings » while turnovers and runaway apprentices scramble through the work; and it is HE who ultimately drives the broken-spirited and worn-out printer to the bankruptcy court. And HE is master of the situation; HE fixes the price of work. Typo knows him well, and will have none of him. « What!! » he shrieks with well-affected surprise when an estimate is given. « Preposterous! Extortionate! X will do the work at fifty per cent. less, but I thought I'd give you a turn. » « Then go to X. We keep good paper, good ink, and good type. We pay good workmen a fair wage, and we have to meet our trade bills and pay our taxes. We charge accordingly. » When the master-printers of the north unite—as they have wisely done down south, HE will dictate to them no longer. If he wants his work done, he must pay for it.

In the anti-boy crusade, we fear that the unions overlook some very obvious truths, as for example: that boys have rights; that every man was once a boy; that the boys of to-day will in the ordinary course of things become men, with men's responsibilities; and that the present generation must in its turn give place to them. Unless these facts are kept steadily in view, no just judgment can be formed on this difficult question. That the average boy is trouble-some, destructive, indolent, and at times exasperating, is only too true; nevertheless he has certain rights, and it is not the least troublesome boy who will always make the best workman. His rights are that he shall be allowed every opportunity to qualify himself to take his share of the world's work, and that any trade, occupation, or profession for which he manifests an aptitude shall be open to him. These rights are often denied in the most arbitrary manner by trade unions. So much is the case that we read of certain lads in one of the United States committing petty larceny in order that they might be committed to the penitentiary—the only place where they would be permitted to learn a trade! The result of such a state of things in a few years could only be such a glut of the unskilled labor market as would lead to a universal decline in wages and threaten the foundations of society. Another right that the boy has is to be instructed fully in his chosen trade. We do not agree with our correspondent that masters as a rule are negligent in this respect. The old days when every « notch » and « wrinkle » had to be paid for in beer have passed away—trade journals have put a stop to that state of things—and if a lad shows any aptitude or desire to excel, master and foreman are only too glad to afford him every facility.

How, then, are we to account for the fact that so few good work men, and such a shoal of bad ones, are turned out every year?

First, the reason we have already given. The sordid greed of customers and the cut-throat competition of masters, are pushing good work out of the field. The apprentice sees nothing but scamped work, turned out anyhow, and has little opportunity of developing such natural taste or skill as he may possess. The other cause is the besetting sin of the colonial youth—impatience of restraint. He will not bear the easy yoke in his youth, and he consequently groans under the heavy pne all the rest of his days, He simply refuses to page 131be apprenticed, and his parents encourage him in his objection. When he finds that he can pick up type as fast as the journeyman who works beside him (no matter how he does it), he thinks he is entitled to a man's wages, and asks for them. He is refused, turns ugly, and gets the « sack. » He turns up in some country office, where with two or three like him, working at about half standard rates, a scarcely-legible sheet is turned out, full of ghastly blunders, and job-printing of every kind is undertaken and ruthlessly massacred. Nineteen times out of twenty the bad workman has no one but himself to blame for his inefficiency. Limiting the number of apprentices will never cure the evil. More wholesome discipline in the home—a sense on the part of the youths and men alike that every right has its correlative duty; and such an amount of self-respect on the part of the Trade as will enable masters to fix a fair price and insist upon getting it—would in a very brief period effectually solve the Boy Problem.

Here is an item of interest to stamp-collectors. The Government Insurance Department, dissatisfied with the present arrangement, under which it pays the Postal Department a fixed annual sum for postage, has decided to pay for its postages in « the usual way. » Not quite in the usual way, however, for it is to have its own special stamp, bearing the device of a lighthouse, with the words « Government Security » printed upon it. We hope that the other Government departments will not follow suit. No doubt it would be very pretty, though a little bewildering, to have the Survey-office stamp, with its cabbage tree; the Marine Department, with a steamer; the Education Department, with a bust of Pallas, &c., but it would come rather expensive.

We have already referred to the proposal by a Victorian firm to secure the backs of colonial postage stamps for advertising purposes. There was at first a disposition to accept the offer; but we are glad to report that it has now been definitely rejected. The New Zealand Postal Department, after consulting with the Australian Governments, has come to the conclusion that the objections to the scheme are too many and too great to be counterbalanced by a monetary benefit. The dollar is not quite almighty.

But how would it do to allow advertisers, who choose to pay for it, the same privilege as has been granted to the Insurance Department—a private postage stamp? The American Government does something of the kind with the inland revenue stamp for patent medicines. By extending the idea to postage, the postage-stamp advertising idea could be carried out in an orderly manner, and an interesting variety would be introduced into the stamp currency. Certain regulations would of course have to be framed. Let them be, say, as follows:

1.It shall be open to any person so desiring, to have a private postage label.
2.The person requiring such private stamp must deposit with the Department the sum of £____ and a copy of the device, which must receive the approval of the Postmaster-General.
3.Such stamps shall be printed on the official water-marked paper, in the stamp.printing department, and must correspond in size and color with the postage-stamps of like values.
4.Such stamps shall be supplied to the advertiser in parcels of not less value than £____ at any one time, and can only be supplied for cash, the usual discount to licensed dealers being allowed.
5.In addition to the words representing value, and the private device or trade-mark, each stamp must bear the words « New Zealand [Trade] Postage. »
6.All preliminary charges connected with engraving, electrotyping, &c., to be defrayed by the advertiser.
7.Such stamps [shall not be allowed to be sold to the public, and may only be used by the advertisers or his authorized agents in connection with his own business; but] shall be available for any purpose for which postage or revenue stamps of like value are used.
8.For the privilege of using such stamps an annual fee of £____ shall be charged.

Since writing the above we have noticed that the two foremost English advertisers have proposed to pay the English Government the sum of £25,000 per annum, besides providing the necessary date-stamps, for a new system of obliterating. The ordinary circular stamp would be surrounded by a larger circle, and in the ring thus formed would appear the advertisement of the firm. The « private stamp » would be much better, and we are certain that either Pears or Beecham would turn out a more artistic set than the dismal « Jubilee » series.