V. APPRENTICESHIP AND CHILD LABOR
Children were an integral part of the colonial labor system because the work of children was inseparable from family relationships. In the English colonies, as in the mother country, the family was the basic unit of production and the framework within which labor was ordinarily performed. Children as young as six years of age or under assisted parents in farm and domestic tasks, as well as in stores and workshops. The labor of children was a social fact, not a social problem.[1a]
Settlement of an undeveloped continent put a premium on the labor of both children and adults. If the new settlements were to survive, everybody had to work. Shortage of textiles seems to have been a crucial problem in all the colonies. As early as 1654, Edward Johnson praised the people of Rowley, Massachusetts, because they had "built a fulling mill, and caused their little ones to be very diligent in spinning cotten wool." [1b] In 1641 the General Court of Massachusetts ordered: "all masters of families should see that their children and servants should bee industriously implied. . . that the honest and profitable custome of England may bee practised amongst us, so as all hands may bee implied for the working out of hemp and flaxe, and other needfull things for cloathing, without abridging any such servants of their due times for foode and rest, or other needfull refreshings." [1c] A decade and a half later the General Court decreed: "all hands not necessaryly imployd on other occasions, as woemen, girles, and boyes, shall, and hereby are, enjoyned to spin according to their skill and abillitie; and that the select men in every towne doe consider the condition and capacitie of every familie, and accordingly to assess them, as one or more spinners." [1d]
If necessity justified the labor of young children, religion sanctified it. From an early age children were warned that idleness destroyed souls and undermined the social system. In the Puritan ethic, work was essential to salvation and the mark of good citizenship. These exhortations were not confined to New England. Children in Pennsylvania entered daily in their copybooks: "By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread." [1e] It was not uncommon in New England for well-to-do parents to bind their children to other households to serve as servants or apprentices so that they would experience and profit from the discipline of work.
Both family and government had a part in keeping everyone constructively employed. It was the child's duty to work, the father's legal obligation to prepare him for a useful occupation, and the responsibility of the magistrates to provide work for the poor and punish the idle. Neglect by parents and masters of the obligation of "training up their children in learning and labor," among other considerations, led to the passage of a Massachusetts statute in 1642 that required parents and masters to provide for the "calling and imployment of their children." [1f] Penn's charter for Pennsylvania in 1682 prescribed that all children in the province, on reaching the age of twelve, should be taught some trade or skill "to the end that none may be idle, but the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want." [1g]
In addition to husband, wife, and children, the labor force of a household might include slaves, servants, and apprentices. The slave was a chattel, but servants and apprentices had the status of children and lived and functioned as part of the family.
Servants were bound by indenture to serve a certain number of years, without any specification of the type of labor. Child servants came to the colonies either as redemptioners, who entered into agreements voluntarily, promising to pay for their passage by labor in America, or as refugees from orphanages and workhouses in England. These sources of supply were supplemented by "spiriting," often a lucrative business. A survey of the seventeenth-century county court records of most colonies made by Richard B. Morris suggests the predominance of children among imported servants. Most servants were under nineteen years old, the average being between fourteen and sixteen years. Some were as young as six. [1h]
Although the law defined servitude and apprenticeship as two separate institutions, apprenticeship in practice was often merely a specialized form of servitude. The main distinction between apprentice and servant was in the master's obligation to teach the former a specific trade. Even this difference disappeared, however, in the case of poor and dependent children, who were bound out as "apprentices," but actually worked as servants.
Apprenticeship was both an educational and economic institution. By training children in a trade, it added to the skilled labor force; at the same time it supplied masters' workshops and households with additional labor. Town and church officials, by binding out poor and orphan children used apprenticeship as a means of social control and public welfare. Thus, two types of apprenticeship developed side by side: voluntary, where the child and his parents or guardians entered into the agreement on their own initiative, and compulsory, where orphan or poor or neglected children were bound out by the authorities. [1i] Masters were required to train voluntary apprentices for particular trades, and courts sometimes released the apprentice if his master failed to keep his part of the bargain. Compulsory apprenticeship more nearly resembled servitude, because the child or his parents, if present, had little voice in the choice of master or trade.
Voluntary apprentices normally served for seven years. Boys were apprenticed between ten and fourteen years of age and served until they were twenty-one. Girls served to age eighteen or until marriage. Compulsory apprentices on the other hand served until they were twenty-one, regardless of their age at the time of indenture. Since some were placed in infancy, their term of service often far exceeded seven years. The mutual obligations between master and apprentice were formalized in an indenture, signed by both parties before witnesses, and subsequently registered in court.
Apprenticeship was integrated with the functions of the family. Apprenticeship has been defined as "the contractual exchange of vocational training in an atmosphere of family nurture for absolute personal service over a stated period of years." [1j] The apprentice lived in the master's household and saw his own family rarely--and only with his master's permission--even if the family lived nearby. The master acted in loco parentis, assuming responsibility for the apprentice's material and spiritual welfare, and empowered to enforce his rules with the usual means of discipline. The apprentice, on his part, owed his master service, obedience, and loyalty.
Colonial apprenticeship stemmed from medieval practice, as institutionalized in the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers, but, because of American conditions, developed along different lines. In England the purpose of apprenticeship was to control competition among craft guilds. In the colonies, owing to the prevailing labor shortage, this objective was unrealistic. In consequence, colonial apprenticeship emphasized trade education instead of restrictions and controls. Benjamin Franklin was not required to prove that he had completed his apprenticeship when he sought his first job as a printer, but he did have to demonstrate his skill. In view of the labor shortage, the colonial master could hardly afford to impose property qualifications on the parents of prospective apprentices, or demand high training fees, as was customary in England. Nor was the seven year training term always observed in voluntary apprenticeship agreements. In New York, although the common council tried to uphold the seven year period in an order of 1711, four years was nearer the norm.[1k] In Massachusetts the longer term was generally unenforced, although Boston in 1660 required seven years, since youths training for shorter periods had shown themselves "incapable of being artists in their own trades." [1l] In the tobacco colonies, where the bulk of the labor force consisted of compulsory apprentices, the term was normally longer than four years.
The most important difference between English and American apprenticeship systems was the American emphasis on general education. More often than not, articles of apprenticeship in England failed to require masters to teach reading and writing. American indentures, on the other hand, obligated masters to instruct apprentices in reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. The educational laws passed in various colonies from 1642 to 1731 reflect a continuous concern with the education of apprentices. The Massachusetts law of 1642 obligated not only parents but masters to supply instruction. [1m] Connecticut passed a similar law in 1650, and New Haven in 1655. The Duke of York's Law (New York) of 1665, patterned after the Massachusetts law, required the instruction of all children and apprentices "in matters of Religion and the Laws of the county . . . and in some honest and Lawful Calling," A Massachusetts law of 1703 required that poor apprentices be taught to read and write. Amendments in 1710,1720, and 1731, specified that males be taught reading, writing, and ciphering; females reading and writing. Although intended initially for poor, involuntary apprentices, these requirements applied to all children.[1n] When masters were illiterate or unwilling to spend time on education, they were supposed to send apprentices to schools and pay tuition for their instruction. In Massachusetts the towns helped masters who were unable to pay. In New York masters sent apprentices to evening schools, usually kept for three months in the winter, which were apparently created specifically for the teaching of apprentices. In Massachusetts apprentices attended day schools. [1o] The colonies tried to assure the apprentice the skills needed for usefulness and advancement.
[1b.] "Wonder-Working Providence," MHS Collections, 2d ser., VII (1826), 12-13.
[1d.] Order of the General Court of Massachusetts, May 1656, Mass. Records, III (1854), 396-397.
[1f.] Order of the General Court of Massachusetts, 1642, Mass Records, II (1853), 8-10.
[1i.] On the binding out of poor and orphan children see above, Chap. III, passim.
[1j.] Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill, 1960), p. 17.
[1n.] Seybolt, Apprenticeship, pp. 105-106.