Open the door! �I will not open it. �Wherefore not? �The knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur�s Hall; and none may enter therein but the son of a King of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft. |
| - dialog from a 14th-century Welsh Bardic manuscript, the Red Book of Hergest |
Apprentices were required to make a "masterpiece", a test piece, after completing their apprenticeships. The sample of his craft was submitted for inspection by a group of masters to gain the recognition of the apprentice of his status as a �freeman� by the appropriate guild.
The centralisation of production caused by the industrial revolution brought changes to apprenticeships. previous to the industrial revolution, apprenticeships were �domestic" in nature - the apprentice lived with a master and was dependent upon the master for food, clothing and shelter. Industrialisation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought about monetary compensation as wages, graduated in accordance with a predetermined scale and the apprentice tended to be trained in a particualr area of the production proces.
The term "Indenture" is derived from the English practice of tearing "indentions" or notches in duplicate copies of apprenticeship forms, the uneven edge identifying the copies retained by both the apprentice and the master as a valid.
Both the original and the copy of the indenture were signed by the master and the parent or guardian of the apprentice who were usually fourteen years of age or under (see also Poor Laws).
see also: the Poor Laws
THE COLONIES
This exploitation of the poor, sometimes former prisoners, who were given little or no opportunity to learn a trade was widespread in the Southern States of what became the USA where labor was in great demand on the plantations. The Indentured workers paid off the cost of their transportation by serving these "apprenticeships". Ships� captains and bartering agents were tempted into the trafficing of such workers by the profits to be made from the trade. Public sentiment in the colonies eventually brought about legislation controlling the practice.
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| Benjamin Franklin |
| | Aged twelve, Fraklin was indentured for nine years to his elder brother, James, as a printer in 1718. The provisions of the indenture were especially generous for the time with their father paying James �10 to pay for the Benjamin�s food, lodging, and other �necessaries� and Benjamin was to receive a journeyman�s wage in the last year of his apprenticeship. Aged fifteen, Benjamin arranged for a cash payment for his food because he had become a vegetarian and, finding vegetables and fruit cheaper than meat, he was able to buy books froms the savings which he made. |
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