Boy life & labour : the manufacture of inefficiency / by Arnold Freeman.

  • Arnold Freeman
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Boy life & labour : the manufacture of inefficiency / by Arnold Freeman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/276 (page 10)
    in varying degrees, form the environment in which the boys of Birmingham are growing up to manhood. Chapter VIII. considers the Industrial Conditions amid which they move. The last Chapter concerns itself with such Remedies for the evils connected with Unskilled Boy Labour as seem to suggest themselves in consequence of the con- clusions reached in the preceding chapters. Preliminary Note. DEFINITIONS. Misconceptions arise in investigations such as these because of the vagueness of the terminology employed. The terms Skilled ” and Unskilled,” “ Inefficient ” and Unemployable,” which are continually used in this study, seem especially to call for definition. Modern industrial conditions are such as to render the lines of demarcation between skilled ” and unskilled ” forms of work, and between inefficiency ” and unemploy- ableness,” very difficult to draw. For the purposes of this investigation these terms will be used in the sense indicated by the following definitions :1— “ Skilled work or a ‘ trade ’ is any manual industrial operation or process, the performance of which requires that the workman shall have had a definite training extending over a term of years ” (e.g. Compositor; Plumber; Gardener). Unskilled work is any manual industrial operation or process, the performance of which requires that the workman shall possess some degree of strength, dexterity, and knowledge, which may be obtained by practice, and 1 The definitions of Skilled and Unskilled work are those given by Professor E. J. Urwick in his Evidence before the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, Appendix, Vol. IX., 96921 Note.