Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship, as a concept, is a global phenomenon. Prior to the development of industrial society and wage labor systems, the vast majority of the world developed local economic systems that used local labor, local materials, and local cultural forms to serve local and regional markets. Within this system, what is commonly referred to as "craft guilds" developed to safeguard the knowledge associated with the craft, to protect the interest of those trained in the craft, and to educate young people who were interested in learning the given expertise to earn a living. As an apprentice, a person was required to spend a given amount of time with a master craftsman to learn the skill. In exchange for their labor the apprentices would usually spend three to seven years with the master craftsmen to learn the knowledge base associated with the trade. During that period the apprentices would work exclusively with the master craftsmen. In many cases they would live with their trainers. While learning, they would perform domestic as well as rudimentary skills associated with the given skill. A fraction of the apprentice's time could be spent earning a living. Upon completion of an apprenticeship, the person was considered a novice in the associated craft. After practicing the craft for a number of years and developing a reputation for quality work, a person would eventually earn the title of master craftsman.

During the era of New World slavery, transformations in the economies of Western Europe and Africa distorted, challenged, and in some cases eliminated the guild system. In Western Europe the guild system gave way to mass production in forms such as textile mills. In Africa the most productive and knowledgeable workers and master craftsmen were enslaved to serve on plantations in the Americas. In the North American British colonies the guild system would, to some degree, resurface as the basis for organizing skilled workers in northern industries. With the introduction of chattel slavery, however, the incorporation of enslaved and free African labor would become problematic. Because of both economic insecurity and racism, white workers alienated and resented free African workers, who were relegated to menial labor jobs. They barred them, in most cases, from becoming apprentices to master craftsmen. Organized labor in the southern colonies, in the form of craft guilds, was totally unacceptable for enslaved African workers. Generally those who were enslaved, but skilled, performed specific duties for the plantation owner such as house construction, blacksmithing, house repairs, leatherwork, and shoemaking. Oftentimes those who were skilled were rented out to local businesses and plantations. The master would of course receive the wages for the work performed.

On the eve of emancipation in slave societies throughout the Americas, the apprenticeship concept would resurface in an unusual form. Former slave owners would argue that free African laborers were childlike and required supervision. Without supervision and guidance concerning how to make a living and function as a free laborer, they would become both a burden to themselves and society at large. The apprenticeship program, they argued, was a gradual way to potentially integrate the former slaves into society as potentially free laborers. In some instances abolitionists, who believed that slave labor created a consciousness in the enslaved that despised productive work and economic activity, advocated for the apprenticeship programs. "Free Negroes," by contrast, maintained a "strong and vibrant" work ethic because they were spared the harshness and oppressive nature of enslaved labor (Alexander 1842, pp. 44-45). In contrast, some pro-slavery advocates would argue that the apprenticeship system actually contributed to the collapse of southern culture and economic activity because it provided the slave with too much freedom. A return to the former days of forced labor and supervision was seen as the only alternative because "without force he (the Negro) will sink into lethargy, and revert to his primitive savage character, and the only feasible and effectual plan to promote his civilization is to persist in those measures that compel him to labour" (The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists 1836, pp. 120-122).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Abolitionist; or, Record of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1833.

Alexander, George William. Letters on the Slave Trade Slavery, and Emancipation: with a Reply to Objections Made to the Liberation of the Slaves in the Spanish Colonies; Addressed to Friends on the Continent of Europe, during a Visit to Spain and Portugal. London: C. Gilpin, 1842.

The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists. Philadelphia: H. Manly, 1836.

                                            Kwasi Densu