NO SPECIFIED TIME FOR OR SOURCE OF THE TEACHING.—­Under Traditional Management there is no particular time in which this teaching goes on, no particular time allowed for the worker to ask for the instruction, nor is there any particular source from which he obtains the instructions.  There is, moreover, almost every hindrance against his getting any more instruction than he absolutely must have in order to get the work done.  The persons to whom he can possibly appeal for further information might discharge him for not already knowing.  These persons are, if he is an apprentice, an older worker; if he is a journeyman, the worker next to him, or the foreman, or someone over him.  An important fact bearing on this subject is that it is not to the pecuniary advantage of any particular person to give this teaching.  In the first place, if the man be a fellow-worker, he will want to do his own work without interruption, he will not want to take the time off; moreover, he regards his particular skill as more or less of a trade secret, and desires to educate no more people than necessary, to be as clever as he is.  In the third place, there is no possible reward for giving this instruction.  Of course, the worker necessarily improves under any sort of teaching, and if he has a receptive mind, or an inventive mind, he must progress constantly, either by teaching himself or by the instruction, no matter how haphazard.

GREAT VARIATION UNDER TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT.—­Only discussion of teaching under this type of management with many men who have learned under it, can sufficiently emphasize the variations to be found.  But the consensus of opinion would seem to prove that an apprentice of only a generation ago was too often hazed, was discouraged from appealing for assistance or advice to the workers near him, or to his foreman; was unable to find valuable literature for home-study on the subject of his trade.  The experience of many an apprentice was, doubtless, different from this, but surely the mental attitude of the journeymen who were the only teachers must have tended toward some such resulting attitude of doubt or hesitancy in the apprentice.

MENTAL ATTITUDE OF THE WORKER-TEACHER.—­Under the old plan of management, the apprentice must appear to the journeyman more or less of a supplanter.  From the employee’s standpoint it was most desirable that the number of apprentices be kept down, as an oversupply of labor almost invariably resulted in a lowering of wages.  The quicker and better the apprentice was taught, the sooner he became an active competitor.  There seldom existed under this type of management many staff positions to which the workers could hope to be promoted, certainly none where they could utilize to the fullest extent their teaching ability.  There was thus every reason for a journeyman to regard the teaching of apprentices as unremunerative, irksome, and annoying.

WORKER NOT TO BLAME FOR THIS.—­The worker is not to be blamed for this attitude.  The conditions under which he worked made it almost inevitable.  Not only could he gain little or nothing by being a successful teacher, but also the bullying instinct was appealed to constantly, and the desire of the upper classmen in hazing days to make the next class “pay up” for the hazing that they were obliged to endure in their Freshman year.