Apprenticeships Redefined by Revolution

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the British apprenticeship system. It deals with the changing status of the apprentice and of employers and plots the history of the system from the early eighteenth-century through to the late nineteenth.

From the Paper:

"For many centuries, Britain had embraced the apprenticeship system as a method of educating the young in the skills required within the workplace. Training at the feet of a master craftsman provided apprentices with one-on-one instruction in the intricacies of trades ranging from wheel weighting to printing. Due to the protracted nature of an apprenticeship, the payment of a premium by the parents or guardians and the guarantee of future well-paid employment, the undertaking of an apprenticeship was seen as both honorable and worthwhile. It was also one which would ultimately result in journeyman standing, a position of high esteem. However, this high regard for apprenticeships would be irrevocably diminished during the nineteenth-century, and whilst the Revolution was not directly instrumental in this demise, it would play a major part in redefining the construct of the apprenticeship."

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