Hobsbawm - Artisan or Labour Aristocrat

8/13/2019 Hobsbawm - Artisan or Labour Aristocrat

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Artisan or Labour Aristocrat?Author(s): E. J. HobsbawmSource: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), pp. 355-372Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Economic History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2597286 .Accessed: 22/01/2014 16:20

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r t i s a n r L a b o u r Aristocrat?

by E. J. HOBSBAWM

The lecture which I have the honour of giving today is not intended asa continuation of the debate on the labour aristocracy, which has been

gathering pace and impetus in recent years.1 In this sense the question-markat the end of the title is deceptive: there will be no direct answer to thequestion whether the concept of a labour aristocracy is useful, what thisstratum consisted of, or how it developed. Of course, such an answer isunnecessary for the group on which I want to concentrate today, namely theskilled workers usually known in the nineteenth century as artisans , sinceas a group they, or certainly their organized sector, would certainly haveconsidered themselves a privileged stratum or aristocracy of labour. Conver-sely, insofar as there was a model of the labour aristocrat in the minds ofthe many who used this term, or equivalent terms, in the nineteenth century,it was almost certainly that of the skilled artisan, separated by an abyss fromthe labourer . Whatever may have been the case elsewhere, in the world ofthe tradesman according to workshop etiquette-and nowhere is professionaletiquette more sternly insisted upon than among the handicrafts-all who arenot mechanics are labourers. 2 However, while I believe that my observationshave some bearing on the debate about a labour aristocracy, my argumentdoes not depend on any particular position in that debate.

It is essentially an argument about the fortunes and transformations of theskilled manual wage-worker in the first industrial nation. His characteristics,values, interests and, indeed, protective devices, had their roots deep in thepre-industrial past of the crafts which provided the model even for skilledtrades which could not have existed before the industrial revolution, such asthe Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers. Skilled labour continued to bear the

marks of this past until well into the twentieth century; in some respects itsurvived strongly until World War II. It is now generally accepted thatthe British industrial economy in its prime relied extensively, and oftenfundamentally, on skilled hand-labour with or without the aid of poweredmachinery. It did so for reasons of technology, insofar as manual skill couldnot yet be dispensed with; for reasons of productive organization, becauseskilled labour supplemented and partly replaced design, technological expert-ise, and management; and, more fundamentally, for reasons of businessrationality. So long as it did not stand in the way of making satisfactory profits,

the heavy costs of replacing it, or incidental to its replacement, did not seem* A revised version of the Tawney Memorial Lecture, g83.1 Much of this lecture s based on the research, till argely unpublished n print, of a number f younger

labour historians. Among them readers amiliar with the field will recognize my debt to Nina Fishman,Gareth Stedman Jones, Wayne Lewchuk, Keith McLelland, Joe Melling, Alastair Reid, Richard Priceand Jonathan Zeitlin.

2 Anon., Working Men and Women by a Working Man (i879), p. 62.

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356 E. J. HOBSBAWM

to be justified by the prospects of the profits to be made without it. Thisapplied not only to special cases like Fleet Street. Sir Andrew Noble ofArmstrong's argued, no doubt correctly, that there was more money to bemade from building one river boat than from producing 6,ooo cars.3 Unlike

the USA, skilled manual labour was not in short supply. And the majorincentive to replace it, namely the mass production of standardized oods,was unusually weak or patchy n the British home market until the last decadesof the century, while the commanding position of British goods on the worldmarket, or more precisely n the markets of what today would be called the

third world and the white empire, kept old methods of production viable.Moreover, t may be suggested hat, in terms of money wages, British skilledlabour was probably not expensive. It may well have charged ess than thetraffic could have borne.

The British skilled worker hus occupied a crucial position of considerablestrength, and the longer he occupied and exploited t, the more troublesomeand expensive it would be to dislodge him. Skill could indeed have beentoppled. Skilled men were defeated n pitched and apparently ecisive battlesbetween the early i83os and the early i85os-even the powerful engineers.Yet what followed in the i85os and i86os was, in most industries, a tacitsystem of arrangements nd accommodations etween masters and skilledlabour which satisfied both sides. The position of the skilled men wasreinforced o such an extent that the much more systematic ater attempt to

displace hem by a new and more sophisticated mechanization nd by scien-tific management also largely failed. The nineteenth-century rtisan wasindeed doomed. Except on some small if crucial patches of the industrialeconomy, and in the undergrowth f the black economy, he-for even in ourdays it is very rarely a she-no longer counts for much. But then, neitherdoes British industry.

The history of the artisan s thus a drama n five acts: the first sets him inhis pre-industrial heritage, the second deals with his struggles n the earlyindustrial period, the third with his mid-Victorian lories, the fourth with hissuccessful resistance o renewed attack. The last sees his gradual but far fromsmooth decline and fall since the end of the first post-war boom.

II shall begin with a simple observation. n most European anguages he wordartisan r its equivalent, used without qualification, s automatically aken tomean something ike an independent craftsman r small master, or someonewho hopes o become one. In nineteenth-century ritain t is equally automatic-ally taken to refer to a skilled wage-worker, r indeed sometimes nitially (asin Gaskell's Artisans and Machinery) o any wage-worker. n short, artisantraditions and values n this country became proletarianized, s nowhere else.The term artisan tself is perhaps misleading. It belongs argely o the world

3 J. Zeitlin, 'The Labour Strategies f British Engineering mployers, 890-I922' in H. C. Gospel andC. Littler, eds. Management Strategy and Industrial Relations: An Historical and Comparative urvey (i983).My reference s to p. 20 of the original paper at the SSRC Conference n Business and Labour History,23 March 98i.



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of nineteenth-century social and political discourse, probably entering thepublic vocabulary in the course of the ill-fated campaigns, almost the lastcollective endeavours of both craft masters and journeyman-the latter alreadyvastly predominating-for putting life back into the Elizabethan labour code

at the end of the Napoleonic wars. The term seems rarely to be used for socialdescription or classification in the eighteenth century. The actual word almostuniversally used in working class circles is tradesman . While in nineteenth-century middle-class usage it came to mean almost without exception a,generally small, retailer (a man who was in trade ), in working-class usageit retained, and perhaps among older men still retains, the ancient craft usageof the man who has a trade : here language and the differentiation of theestate of artificers into those who make and those who sell, go together. Wemay note in passing that while being in trade develops connotations of

contempt or deference, having a trade , at least for those who have it orcompare themselves to its possessors, maintains its connotations of self-satisfaction and pride.

As the word master shows an analogous development, becoming innineteenth-century usage a synonym for employer , so conversely journey-man becomes synonymous with a wage-working tradesman. Indeed, in thedawn of industrialization it was sometimes used for any wage-worker. Tradesocieties and trade unions, in which the name of the old artisanate survives,are now not only bodies of traditional crafts like hatters or brushmakers, butunprecedented ones like journeymen steam-engine makers and boilermakers.While unions gradually dropped the word journeyman from their titles,the word itself continued as a description of the skilled man, no longer incontrast to the masters in his trade, but rather in contrast to the apprenticeswhose numbers he sought to control, and especially the labourers or

handymen against whom he defended his job monopoly. Nineteenth-century class differentiation and stratification is thus deeply rooted in thevocabulary, and hence the congealed memories, of the pre-industrial craftworld.

What is more, the term the trade becomes essentially identified with theskilled workers who practise it. The men of every trade speak of their tradeamong themselves as 'the trade'. 4 In connexion with labour affairs saysan early twentieth-century labour dictionary, this term denotes either (I) aspecific craft or occupation in the field of manual employment, or (2) thecollective body of workers engaged at a single specific craft or occupation. 5Indeed, the trade may actually become a synonym for the union. Thus aslate as World War II we find a cooper's apprentice, outraged by seeing alabourer doing skilled work, successfully threatening the boss to bring thematter to the attention of the trade , if he is not told to stop.6

I do not wish to labour the linguistic point, though the question of languageis significant and would repay systematic research. At all events, it is clearthat not only the vocabulary and institutions of pre-industrial craft organiza-tion passed over to the working class almost en bloc, but the basic Victorian

4 Working Men and Women, p. I02.5 Waldo R. Browne, What's What in the Labor Movement: A Dictionary of Labor Affairs and Labor

Terminology New York, I92I), p. 497.6 Bob Gilding, The Journeymen Coopers of East London (Oxford, 971), pp. 56-7.



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classificatory distinction within the working classes also derived from crafttradition. It is common ground that the Victorian division of workers intoeither artisans (or some similar term such as mechanics ) and labourerswas unrealistic, and had always been descriptively inadequate. Yet it was very

generally accepted, and not only by skilled workers, as representing a realdichotomy, which caused no major classificatory problems until the expansionof groups which could not be realistically fitted into either pigeon-hole, orneglected, and who, from the i89os, came to be known vaguely as semi-skilled .7 From the masters' point of view it represented the differencebetween all other labour and skilled labour, i.e. all such as requires a longperiod of service, whether under a definite contract or agreement, and in asingle firm, or with no such agreement, the learner moving about from firmto firm. 8 This was also essentially the men's definition.9

From the men's point of view it represented the qualitative uperiority of theskill so learned-the professionalism of craftsmanship-and simultaneously ofits status and rewards. The apprenticed journeyman was the ideal type oflabour aristocrat, not only because his work called for skill and judgement,but because a trade provided a formal, ideally an institutionalized, line ofdemarcation separating the privileged from the unprivileged. It did notmuch matter that formal apprenticeship was, almost certainly, not the mostimportant gateway to many trades. George Howell estimated in i877 that lessthan io per cent of union members were properly apprenticed.10 They

included as firm a pillar of the crafts as Robert Applegarth, secretary of theAmalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners [ASCJ]. The basic fact wasthat good fitters-even good carpenters and bricklayers, who were much morevulnerable to interloping-were not made in a day or a month. So long asgenuine skill was indispensable, artisans-the kind who would never be outof a job if jobs were going-were less insecure than has been sometimessuggested. What they had to protect themselves against was not so muchlabourers or even handymen who could immediately take over their jobs, buta long-term oversupply of trained tradesmen-and of course the insecurityof both trade cycle and life cycle. In many trades-e.g. in engineering-therisk of an uncontrolled generation of a reserve army of tradesmen was small,though in some of the building trades, with their large influx of country-trained men, it was significant.

Such, then, were the artisans we are dealing with. I may note in passingthat they are not to be confused with the so-called intelligent artisan of themid-Victorian debates on parliamentary reform, or of Thomas Wright, that

hero of a thousand footnotes , to quote Alastair Reid. Artisans were indeedapt to be more adequately schooled than most non-artisans and, as the historyof most labour movements shows, far more apt than the rest to occupyresponsible and leading positions. Even in the I950S skilled workers provided

7N. B. Dearle, Industrial Training: With Special Reference o the Conditions Prevailing in London I914),Pp. 3I-2.

8 Ibid. p. 3I-9 Royal Commission n Labour P.P. 892 XXXVI/i) Group A, Q. i6064. Evidence f J. Cronin, Secretary

of the Associated Millmen of Scotland.10George Howell, 'Trade Unions, Apprentices nd Technical Education', Contemporary eview xxx

(i877), p. 854.



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the same proportion of full-time union officials-about 95 per cent-in formercraft unions with a heavy admixture of the semi-skilled, as in unions stilldescribed as skilled unions.11 Yet, as Thomas Wright correctly observed, thereading artisans with intellectual interests-at least in England-were a

minority among their mates whose tastes did not differ notably from the restof the proletariat.12 An analysis of a sample of what might be considered

intelligent artisans by definition confirms the point. In the first three years'intake of the London Mechanics' Institution such groups as, say, hatters,coopers, and shipwrights were grossly under-represented, though they wouldscarcely have considered themselves less skilled, or lower in the artisanalpecking-order than, say, the somewhat over-represented wood-workingtrades. 13 The truth, confirmed by later attendance statistics at eveningschools14 is that some trades found it professionally more useful to make

written calculations and use or produce designs than others, and thereforetended to be more studious. We may therefore safely leave the intelligentartisan to one side.

What did they derive from their pre-industrial craft heritage? Academicsshould have no difficulty in grasping the assumptions behind the thinkingand action of corporate crafts, since we largely continue to act upon thoseassumptions ourselves. A craft consisted of all those who had acquired thepeculiar skills of a more or less difficult trade, by means of a specific processof education, completed by tests and assessments guaranteeing adequate

knowledge and performance of the trade. In return such persons expected theright to conduct their trade and to make what they considered a decent livingcorresponding to its value to society and to their social status. It is quite easyto translate this last requirement into the terms of market economics, andindeed much of what the crafts did served to restrict entry to the trade, toexclude competition by outsiders (possessing their own trade or not) and torestrict output and labour supply in such a manner as to keep the averageincome at the required level. In our days market economics have indeed takenover, but the basic assumptions of crafts had only a peripheral relation to thediscourse of business schools. They spoke the ancient language of a properlystructured social order, or, in E. P. Thompson's terms, a moral economy :

The obvious intention of our ancestors n enacting he Statute of Artificers) ..was to produce a competent number and perpetual succession of masters andjourneymen, f practical xperience, o promote, secure and render permanent heprosperity of the national arts and manufactures, onestly wrought y their abilityand talents my emphasis], nculcated by a mechanical ducation.

And this in turn meant that they had an unquestionable right . . . [to] thequiet and exclusive enjoyment of their several and respective arts and tradeswhich the law has already conferred upon them as a property. '15 That labour

H. A. Clegg, A. J. Killick, Rex Adams, Trade Union Officers Oxford, 96i), p. 50.12 Cf. Alastair Reid, 'Intelligent Artisans nd Aristocrats f Labour: The Essays of Thomas Wright' n

Jay Winter, ed. The Working Class in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Henry Pelling (Cambridge,i983), pp. I75-6.

13 The Registers of the Institution re preserved n Birkbeck College, University f London, to whichI am obliged for access.

14 N. B. Dearle, Industrial Training, pp. 566-7.15 'Report of the Committee n the Petition of the Watchmakers, 8I7', cited in A. E. Bland, P. A.

Brown, R. H. Tawney, eds. English Economic History: Select Documents I914), pp. 588-go.



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was the working man's property and to be treated as such, was, of course,a commonplace of contemporary radical political debate.

Conversely, the duty to work properly, was assumed and accepted: theLondon Operative Tinplate Workers who left their job, were obliged to return

to complete any unfinished work, or to pay for it to be completed, on pain offine by their Society.16 In short, the trade was not so much a way of makingmoney, but rather the income it provided was the recognition by society andits constituted authorities of the value of decent work decently done by bodiesof respectable men properly skilled in the tasks which society needed. Theideal, and indeed the expected, situation was one in which the authorities leftor conferred these rights on the body of the trade, but in which the tradecollectively ensured the best ways in which they were carried out and safe-guarded.

In the classical, or if you prefer the ideal-typical, corporate crafts of thepre-industrial period, this regulation and safeguarding was essentially in thehands of the craft masters, whose enterprises formed the basic units of thecollectivity, as well as of its educational and reproductive system. It is clearthat artisan interests represented essentially by hired workers would beformulated rather differently. It is less evident that a trade so identifiedwould not be the same as a self-contained stratum of craft journeymenwithin a craft economy, even when organized in specific journeymen's gilds,brotherhoods or other associations. The difference between the latter type of

organization and the British trade society , which developed directly intothe craft union, deserves more analysis than it has received, though somerecent work has advanced it significantly. It has been suggested that suchforms of collective journeyman action tended to stress honour and the socialprestige of the journeymen outside, and often at the expense of, their economicinterests, often by a sort of hypertrophy of symbolic practices such as thewell-known journeymen rituals, fights and riots.17 All we need note here isthat this road of journeyman development-which has no British parallel, sofar as I know-could not easily lead directly into trade unionism.

IIThe economic interests of wage-workers were clearly fundamental in British

journeyman trades' organizations even before the industrial revolution. Thatis to say, they were designed to safeguard them against the primary life risksto manual workers, namely accident, sickness and old age, loss of time,underemployment, periodic unemployment, and competition from a laboursurplus.18 Whereas the core of German or French journeyman collectivitywas to be found outside the workshop-in the institutionalized period oftravel, the journeymen's hostel or lodging-house where the rituals of initiationtook place-the essential locus of the British apprentice's socialization into

16 A. Kidd, History of the Tin-Plate Workers and Sheet-Metal Workers and Braziers Societies (I949), p.28.

17 Cf. Andreas Griessinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre: Streikbewegungen nd kollektives Bewus-stsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen m i8. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 98i), for an extensive discussion.

18 Iorwerth Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century ondon: John Gast and His Times(Folkestone, I979), pp. 27-8.



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the ways of the journeyman was patently he workplace. There he was taughtboth by the precept and the example of his mates, that he must respect thetrade and its written and unwritten aws, and that in any matter affecting hetrade generally he must sacrifice personal nterest, or private opinion, to what

the trade has rightly or wrongly ruled for the general good. 19 There wasthus no clear distinction between the custom of the trade as tradition orritualized practice, and as the rationale of collective action of workers on thejob or the sanction of concessions won by it. Thus some formalized itualscould be allowed to atrophy without weakening he force of the custom ofthe trade .

The basic journeyman nstitutions, as Prothero's Artisan Politics shows,were the friendly benefit society, the house of call, the tramping system-which gave artisans a nation-wide dimension-and apprenticeship. To these

research has rightly insisted we must add the unorganized, et by no meanstotally informal, work group in the shop or on the site.20They protected he interests of hired men-yet it must never be forgotten

that this was seen to be the trade , composed essentially of hired men, thatis to say a specific body of respectable and honourable men defending heir

craft , i.e. their right to independence, respect, and a decent livelihoodwhich society owed them in return for the proper performance f sociallyessential tasks which required their education n skill and experience. The

right o a trade n the original constitution of the ASE was compared o the

right belonging tothe holder of a

doctor'sdiploma.21 The qualification or

the job was identical with the right to exercise t.The artisan's ense of independence was, of course, based on more than a

moral imperative. It was based on the justified belief that his skill wasindispensable o production; ndeed on the belief that t was the only ndispens-able factor of production. Hence the artisan's objection to the capitalismwhich, in the early nineteenth entury, ncreasingly enied he moral economywhich gave the trades their modest but respected place, was not so much toworking masters, whom they had long known, or to machinery s such, whichcould be seen as an extension of hand tools, but to the capitalist een as anunproductive nd parasitic middleman. Masters who belonged o the usefulclasses both insofar as-to quote Hodgskin- they are labourers s well astheir journeymen nd insofar as they were needed to direct and superintendlabour, and to distribute ts produce 22 were fine: only, unfortunately, theyare also -Hodgskin again- capitalists or agents of capitalists, and in thisrespect heir interest s decidedly opposed o the interests of their workmen .Small masters raised no problem at all, and indeed could often be, or remain,

19 Thomas Wright, Some Habits of the Working Classes (i867), p. I02. See also the account by F. W.Galton n S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism (i894), pp. 43I-2, and, for the importance f ritualsattached to the workplace, John Dunlop, Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usages of the United Kingdom(7th edn. i844), passim.

20 See R. Price, Masters, Unions and Men: Work Control n Building and the Rise of Labour (Cambridge,1g80), ch. 2, for references.

21 It is our duty then to exercise he same control over that n which we have a vested nterest, as thephysician who holds his diploma, or the author who is protected by his copyright. Preface o the Rulesof the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, i85I, cited in J. B. Jefferys, ed. Labour's Formative Years I948),p. 30.

22 Cited in G. Stedman Jones, Languages of Class (Cambridge, i983), pp. I36-7.



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members of unions. The theoretical foundations of early socialism, misnamedutopian , are to be found in this attitude. Essentially it envisaged the

elimination of competition and the capitalist by means of co-operative produc-tion by artisans. Prothero has shown how artisans who began simply by trying

to defend or re-establish the old moral economy could find themselvesdriven, under the pressure of the economic transformations of the earlynineteenth century, to envisage a new and revolutionary way of re-establishingthe moral social order as they saw it, and in so doing to become socialinnovators and revolutionaries. And Prothero has also, rightly, drawn atten-tion to the fact that in this respect the evolution of the British journeymanartisans runs parallel with that of the continental, or rather French, ones.23Both tended to become politically active as artisans and in doing so totransform themselves into the working classes or essential sectors of these.

Yet there is a vital difference. Utopian socialism, or rather mutualismand producers' cooperation, became and long remained the core of Frenchsocialism. But in Britain, in spite of occasional surges of popularity and anattraction for journeymen cadres, cooperative socialism was always a periph-eral phenomenon, on the way to oblivion even as Chartism swept the country,the first mass working-class movement, in which journeymen artisans, likeall others under economic pressure, took their share. Socialism declined inthe Britain of the i840s, as it rose on the continent. Whatever the reasonsfor this difference-and they remain to be fully explained-they will probably

have to be sought partlyin

the political conditions of the country, but chieflyin the very advance of the British capitalist economy over the rest, whichalready made an economy of small commodity producers, individual orcollective, somewhat implausible or economically marginal. Journeymen wereworkers. They lived in a world of employers. Characteristically, the onlyform of cooperation which proved to have genuine appeal from the start wasthat which sought to replace an economic sector of small independents, namelythe co-op shop.

IIIThus the tradesman had no difficulty in coming to terms with an economy

of industrial capitalism, once that economy decided to accept his modestclaims to skill, respect and relative privilege, and plainly offered expandingopportunities and material improvement. And this clearly came to be the casein the i85os and i86os. Their position may be symbolized in the anniversarydinner of the Cardiff branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters andJoiners in i867, in the Masons Arms,

nicely decorated with evergreens tc. and over the head of the president's hair wasa design portraying he friendship existing between employer and workman, bytheir cordially shaking hands.

This iconographic theme appears frequently at the time.24In the background was represented he commerce of all nations and in the corner

23 Prothero, Artisans, p. 337-8. For a clear statement, ee William H. Sewell Jr., Work nd Revolutionin France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to i848 (Cambridge, i980), p. 283.

24 See the description f banners n W. A. Moyes, The Banner Book (Gateshead, 974).



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sion of personal tools,34 those small but vital means of production whichenabled him to work anywhere at his trade. Broadhurst, he union leader and

Lib-Lab MP, kept his mason's tools packed and ready throughout his timeof political eminence: they were his insurance.35 Many years later, in I939,when the boilermaker Harry Pollitt was deposed rom his post in the Commu-nist Party, his mother proudly wrote: Your marking-off ools are here, andI have kept them in vaseline, ready or use at any time. 36 At a more modestlevel, when Jess Oakroyd, n J. B. Priestley's Good Companions, ost his joband went on tramp, the most important hing he took with him was his bagof tools.

The highest skills did not necessarily equire he most expensive or elaboratetool-kit, though proud tradesmen-notably in wood-working-spent heavilyon tools and luxury containers as status symbols. The ASCJ n i886 limitedbenefit for the loss of a tool-chest, on the grounds hat if a member akes amore valuable chest to work [i.e. than is necessary] he should do so at hisown risk. 37 Tool insurance by the union was usual among woodworkers,though ess so among metal-workers, resumably ecause heir personal oolswere ancillary to shop equipment.38 The tool benefit of the ASCJ wasclearly intended as a major selling-point or the union-it insured againsttheft, and not only against ire and shipwreck-and its importance s indicatedby the frequency of branch resolutions and notices on the subject.39 ndeed,in their first thirty years the amount of tool benefit paid per member wasroughly comparable o accident benefit, and amounted o c. 55 per cent offuneral benefit.40

Yet the value of implements was secondary o their symbolic mportance.London shipwrights, han whom few were more skilled, owned perhaps 50shillings' worth in i849, according o Mayhew,41 nd in the i88os the unionpaid 50 per cent of replacement costs up to a maximum of ?5.42 Mayhewestimated abinet makers' ools at ?30-40, joiners' ools at up to ?30, coopers'at ?I2. These figures, except for carpenters nd joiners, are rather higher hanthose quoted in the Royal Commission n Labour or derivable rom the listsof stolen tools in the carpenters' eports; and according o both Mayhew and

34 That f the Central Association f Employers arry out their hreat of a Masters' trike . . it is theduty of working men to . . . begin manufacturing for the public . . . . That inasmuch as many of ourmembers ave athes and other ools n their possession . . it is to be hoped hat hey will . . . communicatetheir ntention f lending uch tools for the benefit of those persons who may be thrown ut of employmentby the masters' trike. Announcement y the Council of ASE in The Operative, 3 Dec. i85I.

35 Henry Broadhurst, The Story of his Life rom Stone-mason's ench o the Treasury ench i90i), p. 2.36 Harry Pollitt, Serving my Time I94i edn.), p. I4.37 ASCJr, Monthly Report, July i886, pp. I37-8.38 The Boilermakers ppear to have had none (D. C. Cummings, History of the United Society of

Boilermakers nd Iron & Steel Ship Builders Newcastle, I905), pp. 36-7, 52. The ASE Annual Reportsincluded expenditure or loss of tools by fire n an item of the accounts overing miscellaneous rants,from which its relative nsignificance may be inferred.

39 Following branch pressure, ists of tools stolen rom members were published n the Monthly Reportfrom October 868 on.

40 Total benefit per member f ASCJ 860-i889 inclusive: Funeral, 3 2S. 8d.; Accident, Li I5s. iold.;Tool, Li W4s.61d. (G. Howell, The Conflicts f Capital and Labour Historically nd Economically onsid-ered, being a History nd Review of the Trade Unions f Great Britain etc. (2nd edn. i890), p. 5 I9.

41 Henry Mayhew, The Morning Chronicle urvey of Labour and the Poor: The Metropolitan istricts(Horsham, 982), v, p. 225.

42 David Dougan, The Shipwrights: heHistory f the Shipconstructors nd Shipwrights ssociation, 882-I963 (i968), pp. I9, 30. See also Royal Commission n Labour P.P. i893-4, xxxiv), Group A Q. 20,4I3,2I,398.
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probability, ools were bought piecemeal n a man's last years of appren-ticeship, and usually second-hand to begin with.43 But they symbolizedindependence. Hence the disputes about grinding-time . ince he tradesmenbrought o the job his skill and his tools, both must be absolutely ready for

action. He and only he must sharpen hem-at a weekly expense which wasnot negligible.44 Logically he moment for this was at the end of the last job,and in the employer's ime, which (or money n lieu) was expected o be madeavailable.45 ven today, as Beynon shows for Ford's, tools still imply someindependence or tradesmen as against production workers.46

But if personal ools symbolized ndependence or the artisans, control ofthe tools symbolized, conversely, the superiority of management. We knowthat management was about to transform ts plant organization, when emerywheels were taken from the shop and workers were no longer allowed to

sharpen ools in their own way and to their own specifications, ut must havethis done to angles determined by others in a special tool-room.47 And,characteristically, he tool-room was to remain the last stronghold of thecraftsman n the semi-skilled mass production engineering works of thetwentieth century. Even in the non-union motor industry between the wars,management would be careful of the susceptibilities f the tool-room and turna blind eye to the unionism of toolmakers. In the nineteenth century suchcontrol was most visible in the giant railway companies, enterprises whichemployed and trained numerous artisans and, though recognizing hat theirforemen were essentially drawn from among them, and hence were likely tohave the artisan view,48 saw no need for a symbiosis with partly autonomouslabour. Thus the Great Western and the Great Eastern turned craftsman'spride into an obligation, by obliging workmen, in the unilaterally mposedworking rules, to buy and insure their personal ools. Foremen n Stratfordwere to examine he men's tool-chests before hey were taken out of the works,and in Derby they needed a special pass to do So.49 The labour policies of therailway companies, which deserve more study than they have so far receivedin Britain, sometimes ook as though they had been specifically designed toreplace craft autonomy and exclusive control by managerial ontrol of hiring,training, promotion o higher grades of skill, and workshop operations.

For tools symbolized not merely the relative ndependence of the artisanfrom management, but, even more clearly, his monopoly of skilled work.The standard xpression or what the unskilled or the not specifically rained

43 Mayhew, v, p. I93. For data on tool costs from the Royal Comm. n Labour Group A), see P.P.i892, XXXVI/ii, Q. i6,848, I9,466, i9,8I2-3, 20,367-9.

44 Mayhew, bid. pp. 94, 96, I55, i67, 2I4 estimates he weekly cost at between 6d. and 2S. a week.45 S. and B. Webb, Industrial emocracy I9I3 edn.), p. 3I3.46 Huw Beynon, Working or Ford (Harmondsworth, 973), p. I45: On the assembly ine one man is

as good as the next man .... In a skilled work situation things are slightly different ... by virtue of thefact that [the men] control he tools, or the knowledge, vital to the completion f the job. The foremanhas to ask them.

47 Zeitlin, 'Labour Strategies', p. 2I, 26.48 The shop foremen will be men who are skilled n the work of their respective hops. Probably s

workmen hey showed especial ability and skill, which led to their promotion rom the ranks. JamesClayton, The Organization f the Locomotive Department', n John Macaulay, d. Modern RailwayWorking: Practical Treatise y Engineering xperts I9I2-I4) II, p. 57.

49 Kenneth Hudson, Working o Rule: Railway Workshop ules: A Study of Industrial iscipline Bath,I970).



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366 E. J. HOBSBAWM

men must be prevented rom doing at all costs, i.e. encroaching r follow-ing the trade , was some variant of the phrase taking up the tools , or

working tradesmen's ools or getting hold of the tools for himself .50Bricklayers' abourers, n more than one set of working rules, were prohibitedspecifically rom the use of the trowel 51 Coopers' abourers were onlyallowed o use some specified coopers' ools such as hammers.52 Conversely,artisans ecognized ach others' status by lending each other tools.53 n short,they may be defined essentially as tool-using and tool-monopolizing nimals.

The right to a trade was not only a right of the duly qualified radesman,but also a family heritage.54 Tradesmen's sons and relations did not onlybecome tradesmen because, as among the professional middle classes, theirchances of doing so were notably superior o the rest, but also because theywanted nothing better for their sons, and fathers nsisted on privileged access

for them. Free apprenticeship or at least one son was provided or in manya set of Builders' Working Rules.55 The formidable Boilermakers' ociety waslargely recruited rom sons and kin,56 and in Edwardian London hereditarysuccession was considered usual among boilermakers nd engineers, n someprinting trades, though among the builders only for the favoured masons,plasterers, and perhaps plumbers. Here it was also pointed out that theattractions f office jobs for tradesmen's ons were small.57 This is confirmedby the analysis of some 200 biographies rom the Dictionary of LabourBiography58 mainly of those born between 850 and i900) which shows that,

though the number of sons of non-tradesmen was only c. 75 per cent of thatof tradesmen, he number of tradesmen's ons who went into white-collar rsimilar obs was not much more than half of that of non-tradesmen's ons. Inshort, for the Victorian artisan, workshop ducation ather han schooling wasstill what counted, and a trade was at least as desirable r better han anythingelse effectively on offer. Indeed, the largest single group in the Dictionarysample (from which I have excluded the overwhelmingly elf-reproducedminers) consisted of c. 70 sons of tradesmen who took up trades, n about halfthe cases, their father's. And we know from Crossick's study of Kentish

50 Working Men and Women, p. 66; ASE Quarterly Report, Dec. i893, pp. 48, 59; Dearle, IndustrialTraining, p. 25.

51 Cf. the collection of builders' working ules n the Webb Collection LSE Library, Coll. EB xxxi-xxxvi and Coll. EC vi-xviii); for instance Bridgnorth i863, Loughborough i892, Worcester i89i (Coll.EB xxxiv). Shrewsbury (Coll. EC vii).

52 Gilding, Journeyman Coopers, p. 56.53 Thomas Wright, The Great Unwashed i869), p. 282: shopmates will lend a long-term ramping

artisan their best tools . Charity Organisation Society, Special Committee on Unskilled Labour: Reportand Minutes of Evidence, June i908, p. 98: In the case of mechanics who have been out of work for anytime, how far are they short of tools . . . ? There s a lot of freemasonry mong hem, and they lend eachother tools. If you looked nto their baskets you would ind ten per cent of them deficient n tools. Note

that the witness, a building oreman, claims to be merely guessing. He does not look into the artisans'baskets. For the penalty of losing tools, namely apsing nto unskilled abouring, ee Mayhew, MorningChronicle Survey, v, p. I30.

54 J. B. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers i945), p. 58 on second and third sons, and sons of fathersout of the trade, joining he trade.

55 Webb Coll. EB xxxiv: Hull, Redditch, Wakefield; oll. EC VII: Bristol, Dudley, Gornal, Kiddermins-ter, Leicester, Rotherham, Stourbridge, Wigan.

56 Keith McLelland nd Alastair Reid, 'The Shipbuilding Workers, 840-I9I4' (unpub. paper), p. i8.57 Dearle, Industrial Training, . 241.58 Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville, eds. Dictionary of Labour Biography, I-VI, (I972-i982).



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London in i873-5 that 43 per cent of the sons of engineering craftsmen weresons of men in these crafts, and 64 per cent came from skilled fathers ingeneral; 64 per cent and 76 per cent of shipbuilding craftsmen came fromshipbuilding and skilled families respectively; as did 46 per cent and 69 per

cent respectively of building tradesmen. I leave open the question whether,as Crossick suggests, the links binding artisans together and separating themfrom the unskilled, actually tightened during the mid-Victorian period.59

This does not mean that entry into the trades was closed. It could hardlybe, considering the rate of growth in the labour force, not to mention powerfulenterprises like the railways, which deliberately saw to the training andpromotion of unskilled labour, and provided a significant road for its upgrad-ing; in the Dictionary sample this is very noticeable. What it does suggest isthe relative advantage the stratum of tradesmen had in reproducing itself, and

the significance within the skilled labour force of this block of self-reproducingartisans; and not least their capacity to assimilate the non-artisans whosucceeded in joining their ranks, so long as artisan status meant a special andlengthy education in skill, essentially conducted by artisans in the workshop.And in i906, according to one estimate, about i8 per cent of occupied malesbeween the ages of I5 and I9 were still classified as apprentices and learners.60In industries and regions dominated by artisans-the north-east coast immediat-ely comes to mind-their ability to assimilate new entrants was clearlyenormous. One recalls that even in I9I4, in spite of considerable efforts, 6o

per cent of the workforce of the Engineering Employers' Federation were stillclassified as skilled.61 Under these circumstances the artisans, or the bulk ofthem, were both privileged and relatively secure.

IVThe crux of their position lay in the economy's reliance on manual skills,

i.e. skills exercised by blue-collar workers. The real crisis of the artisan setin as soon as tradesmen became replaceable by semi-skilled machine operatorsor by some other division of labour into specialized and rapidly learned tasks,i.e. broadly speaking in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Thisphase of artisan history has been fairly intensively investigated, at least forsome industries,62 and it is at this point that the main attack on the conceptof an aristocracy of labour has concentrated. Apart from a diminishingminority, the craftsman's position was no longer protected by the length oftraining and practice, by skill and the willing toleration of employers. It wasprotected primarily by job monopoly secured by trade unions and by workshopcontrol. Yet the jobs now monopolized and protected were no longer skilledjobs in the old sense, though those who were best at protecting them wereusually formerly skilled trades, like compositors and boilermakers, which

59Geoffrey Crossick, An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London, 1840-1880 (I978), p. ii6.60 Charles More, Skill and the English Working Class (i980), p. I03, Table 5.I3.61 M. L. Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions n British Engineering I937), p. 3I, Table 6.62 E.g. A. Reid, 'The Division of Labour n the British Shipbuilding ndustry, 880-I920' (unpublished

Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 980); J. Zeitlin, 'Craft Regulation nd the Division of Labour:Engineers and Compositors n Britain, i890-i9I4' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick,i98i).



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368 E. J. HOBSBAWM

insisted on their members' monopolizing the new de-skilled jobs. But eventhis undermined the special position of the artisan. For, as we all now knowfrom the Fleet Street printing trade, when skill and privilege or high wagesare no longer correlated, artisans are merely one set of workers among many

others who might, given the right circumstances (generally the occupation ofa strategic bottleneck), establish such strong bargaining positions.

Speaking generally, at the end of the nineteenth century the trades foundthemselves, for the first time since the i83os and i840s, threatened byindustrial capitalism as such but without the hope of by-passing it. Theirexistence as a privileged stratum was at stake. Moreover, the employers' mainattack was now against their craft privileges. Hence, for the first time, theirkey sectors turned against capitalism. Thus, unlike some of the traditionaltrades, the new metal-working crafts of the industrial economy had not been

given to breeding political activities. There are few if any engineers and metal-shipbuilders among the nationally prominent Lib-Lab politicians before thei89os. Yet almost from the start, engineers were prominent among thesocialists. At the ASE's Delegate Meeting in I9I2 more than half the delegatespresent appear to have been advocates of collectivism to be achieved byclass war.63 The small argumentative Marxist sects like the Socialist LabourParty were full of them. Engineering shop stewards and revolutionary radical-ism in World War I went together like cheese and pickles, and metal-workers-generally highly skilled men-later came proverbially to dominate

the proletarian component of the Communist Party, to be followed a longway after by builders and miners.64 The left attracted them for two reasons.In the first place, a class-struggle analysis made sense to men engaged in battlewith organized employers on what seemed to be the crucial sector of the frontof class conflict; and by the same token the belief that capitalism wanted ajust balance of all interests , was plainly no longer tenable. In the secondplace, the radical left in the unions, ever since the i88os, specialized indevising strategies and tactics designed to meet precisely those situationswhich appeared to find traditional craft methods wanting.

I do not wish to underestimate this shift to the left, which now gave to theBritish labour movement a political outlook fundamentally different fromthat of Chartist democracy, which still prevailed amid the sober suits ofLiberal radicalism-a new political outlook which, some might argue, was defacto more radical than many continental socialist movements. At the sametime this shift should not be identified with the various brands of socialistideology which now sprang up, and, naturally, attracted young artisansconscious of their new predicament: in the i88os men in their mid- to latetwenties, from Edwardian times perhaps men in their late 'teens. For mosttradesmen the shift to anti-capitalism began simply as an extension of theirtrade experience. It meant doing what they had always done: defending theirrights, their wages, and their now threatened conditions, stopping management

63 B. C. M. Weekes, 'The Amalgamated ociety of Engineers, 880-I9I4: A Study of Trade UnionGovernment, Politics and Industrial Policy' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 970),pp. 3i8-20, 322. As early as i895 four ASE members tood as parliamentary andidates nder ndependentLabour Party auspices: David Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888-1906(Manchester, 983), p. 88.

64 Kenneth Newton, The Sociology of British Communism i969), Apps. II, III.



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from telling the lads how to do their job, and relying on the democracy of theworkplace rank-and-file against the world, which, if need be, included theirunions' leaders. Only now they had to fight management all the time, becausemanagement was permanently threatening to reduce them to labourers ,and now had the technical means of doing so.

They were far from revolutionaries, but how did this constant confrontationdiffer from the class struggle which the revolutionaries preached? If themasters no longer recognized the interests of the skilled men, why should themen recognize those of the masters? I do not believe that many tradesmenwere as yet affected by the drastic renunciation of old craft assumptionssuggested by some of the ultra-left, who recommended fighting capitalismwith its own market principles, by working as little or even as badly as possiblefor as much money as the traffic would bear. Such ideas were put forward inthe syndicalist periods. However, at this stage there is no evidence thattradesmen-still often suspicious of payment by results, though increasinglypushed into it-thought in such terms which, as the Webbs pointed out,undermined their basic principle of pride in work, rewarded by a wage whichrecognized ther standing.

Yet the period from i889 to I9I4 introduces us to an artisan predicamentwhich is similar to that of the British economy as a whole, because it is oneaspect of it. Just as there were men in business who recognized that fundamen-

tal modernization was needed in the British productive system, but failed tomobilize sufficient support to achieve it, so also in the field of labour. Theleft, including the artisan left, knew that craft unionism of the high Victoriankind was doomed. It was the target of all critics. The mass of proposals fortrade-union reform between i889 and I927, ranging from federation andamalgamation to a complete restyling of the union movement along industriallines,65 were all directed against a position which was barely defended intheory even among the leaders of old-style craft unions. Yet no systematicgeneral union reform was achieved, though craft unions recognized someneed to expand, federate, and amalgamate. They also accepted that eliteorganization must henceforth be part of the mass unionization of all workers,and that in such mass unionism the craft societies would inevitably be lessdominant, either numerically or strategically. Yet attempts at general reformfailed so clearly, that after I926 they were de facto abandoned.

Railways and engineering are obvious examples of this failure. The newNational Union of Railwaymen, designed as the model of a comprehensiveindustrial union, never succeeded in integrating most of the skilled footplatemen, and the engineers did not even try, though their left-wing leadershiptime and again committed them to broaden their recruitment: in I892, in i90iand again in I926. But as late as I93I the Amalgamated Engineering Uniontold the Transport and General Workers:

With regard to the organizing activities of the AEU, whilst it was true thatthe constitution of the union was amended to permit of all grades of workersbeing organized within the union, this had not been operated, he AEU confiningits organizing ctivities trictly o those sections of the industry which t had alwaysorganized. It was not the intention of the AEU to depart rom this policy.66

65 Cf. the Resolution of the Hull TUC, I924, in W. Milne-Bailey, d. Trade Union Documents I929),p. I29; for the abandonment f systematic eform, bid. p. I33-4.

66 J. Zeitlin, The Emergence f Shop Steward Organization nd Job Control n the British Car ndustry',History Workshop, o (i980), p. I29.


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370 E. J. HOBSBAWM

For, just as the British ndustrial conomy appeared o enjoy ts EdwardianIndian summer, so did the artisans. Did they need to reform hemselves outof existence? Sheer bloody-minded shop-floor resistance reversed the totalvictory won by the Engineering Employers' Federation n the i897-8 lock-out, incidentally driving the union's socialist general ecretary George Barnesinto the wilderness.67 t had so far restored he position that buying off thecraftsmen became the major task of the I914 war economy. Their positionhad actually been strengthened, because the system of payment by results,which employers preferred o Taylorist and Fordist strategies, aid the basefor endless shop-floor conflicts and, in consequence, shop-steward power.Moreover, during the war the industry was flooded, not with promoteablesemi-skilled machine men, but with 650,000 women, virtually all of whomrapidly disappeared rom the labour market after 919. The union had to be

defeated once again n frontal battle n I922. After that, unions were virtuallydriven out of such new sectors of the industry as motors and electrical goods,even though once again employers n general found the costs of systematicplant rationalization oo high, and the foreseeable rofits nsufficiently ttrac-tive to justify such heavy outlays.

Once again he artisans herefore had their chance n the I930s, as recovery,rearmament nd war made times more propitious for labour organization.This was the last triumph of the Victorian rades. The men who brought hewaters of unionism back into the desert of non-union shops were largely,

perhaps mainly, craftsmen, ike the tool-makers nd the men who built theaircraft of the I930S and I940s, and whose role in the growth of mass metalsunionism was crucial. They were the first nucleus of the revived hop-stewards'movement. These men were craftsmen, or at least, even when engaged onwhat was in effect semi-skilled work, craftsmen by background nd training.They were now also largely Communists, or became Communists.68

VYet, whether hey wanted o or not, they were nitiating heir own iquidationas a special stratum of the working class. This was largely because themechanized ngineering ndustries hey organized no longer rested on artisanskill, though they still needed it. But it was also partly because the left nolonger had a coherent union policy. Given he failure of general union reform,it lacked a practicable new model of union organization. t benefited roma government policy, particularly rom I940 when Ernest Bevin took over theMinistry of Labour, which favoured unionism; but it neither controlled, nor

often understood or usually even approved t. Its major weapon leaving asidethe production-oriented nionism of the Communists n I94I-5) was muchthe same as in I889-I92I: sheer blinkered, dour, stubborn, defence of the

67 Zeitlin, 'Labour Strategies', pp. 30-2.68 For this part of the paper I am especially indebted to the as yet unpublished research of Ms Nina

Fishman on the Communist Party and the Trade Unions in the I930s and I940s. See also R. Croucher,Engineers at War, i939-i945 (i982), esp. pp. i68-74, and James Hinton, 'Coventry Communism: A Studyof Factory Politics in the Second World War', History Workshop, o (i980), pp. I00-2.



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ARTISAN OR LABOUR ARISTOCRAT? 37I

custom of the trade n the shops. It is irrelevant hat some of the left mayhave identified his in some way way with the road to revolution or at least topolitical radicalization. De facto, the left had no specific union strategy, butmerely pursued the old tactics with intelligence, dynamism and efficiency-

in a situation quite unlike that of i889-I92I.What they achieved was the generalization of the old craft-monopolymethods to all sectors of the trade-union movement, and in industries wheretradesmen ormed a diminishing minority among the mass of semi-skilledoperatives. And in doing so the artisans became merely one set of workersamong many others who were in a position to apply such methods, and notnecessarily he ones who could strike the best bargains. n the Fleet Street ofthe late twentieth century, not only has the qualitative difference beweencompositors and printers' abourers disappeared, but the chapel of the

National Graphical Association s not necessarily a more powerful bargainerthan that of SOGAT 82. There is no longer anything special about being atradesman.

Some are clearly on the way out, like the locomotive drivers of the old craftunion ASLEF. Some survive, but in a world they no longer quite understand.Some work for as much money as they can get, and for nothing more.69 Thisis a fundamental break n craft tradition, which, as has been argued, aimedat an income corresponding o the craftsman's tatus as a group, as professorsstill do.70 Hence the persistent historical distrust of piece-rates. A Communist

engineer, nterviewed by a researcher, ecalls his amazement when he discov-ered during the war that workers n Coventry not merely could, but wereexpected o push their earnings into what seemed the stratosphere. And,indeed, the famous Coventry Toolroom Agreement of I94i reflected thiscurious intermingling of old and new principles, until its breakdown nthe I970s. Whereas n the past the toolmakers' arnings had provided themeasuring-rod f their differential ver and above less favoured groups,this differential was henceforth ixed against he entirely undetermined evelof what non-toolmakers n piece-work ould earn. Craftsmanship, oodwork,was no longer the essential foundation of good earnings. If anything, t wasnow a liability, since it stood in the way of the sky-high wages which couldbe earned by the men who deliberately nd consciously ut speed and skimpingbefore sound work. Financially he cowboy -the term s of uncertain rigin,but seems to emerge n the building trade during the hey-day of the lumpin the i960s-could do better than the good tradesmen.

Finally, the possibility of training as a craftsman grew less. In i966 the

69 Beynon, Working or Fords, p. I45.70 Perhaps he most interesting oint about he shipwrights' owers of work control was that they did

not use them to maximize heir earnings r to create differentials. he shipwrights were willing o acceptwages unrelated o the effort or skill of individuals and which tended towards a single rate. (DavidWilson, 'A Social History of Workers n H.M. Dockyard during he Industrial Revolution, particularly,I793-i8I5' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 975, p. i88). For Edwardian killedbuilders' nsistence on standard ates for standard utput, see Charity Organization ociety, Report nUnskilled Labour, Q. 25I-72, pp. I04-5). The Webbs argued, ndustrial Democracy, p. 7I9, noting theparallel with middle-class professional orporatism pprovingly, hat The progressive aising of theCommon Rule, by constantly promoting he 'Selection f the Fittest', causes an increasing pecializationof function, creating a distinct group, having a Standard f Life and corporate raditions f its own whicheach recruit s glad enough to fall in with.



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number of apprentices was only about hree-quarters f what t had been sixtyyears earlier, or indeed in I925, and by I973 it had plummeted o 25 per centof the i966 figure.71 And so did the incentive to follow one's father nto aproper rade. Book education and not skill is now the road to status and, with

diminishing exceptions, even skill has moved into the world of diplomas.And, of course, the road into that world has broadened. There was a timewhen miners might want their sons out of the pit at all costs, but engineerswere content to offer their sons a presumably mproving version of their ownprospects. How many of the sons of toolmakers oday are content to becometoolmakers?

The artisans no longer reproduce hemselves or their kind. The generationof men who grew up with artisan experience and artisan values in the I930sand I940s, still survives, but is growing old. When the last men who have

driven and cared for steam locomotives retire-it will not be long now-andwhen engine-drivers will be little different rom tram-drivers, nd sometimesquite superfluous, what will happen? What will our society be like withoutthat large body of men who, in one way or another, had a sense of the dignityand the self-respect f difficult, good, and socially useful manual work, whichis also a sense of a society not governed by market-pricing nd money: asociety other than ours and potentially better? What will a country be likewithout the road to self-respect which skill with hand, eye, and brain providefor men-and, one might add women-who happen not to be good at passing

examinations? Tawney would have asked such questions. I can do no betterthan to conclude by leaving them with you.

Birkbeck College, London71 In absolute numbers: 906, 343,200 (More, Skill, p. I03); i966, 27I,650 (Min. of Lab. Gazette, Jan.

i967), I974, 66,ooo (Min. of Lab. Gazette, May 974). The statutory chool eaving age was raised o i6from Sept. I972. Only male figures are given, in view of the insignificance f female apprenticeship.