Coinciding with the opening of the United Shoe Manufacturing Corporation in Beverly came a local and state movement for industrial training in high schools. The first annual report of the newly approved school contained a brief history of the concept of industrial education in Massachusetts, followed by a detailed justification for creating such a school in Beverly.
BEVERLY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL
To the Honorable, the City Council of Beverly:
GENTLEMEN: I herewith present to you the annual report of the Trustees of the Beverly Independent Industrial School.
As this is the first report of this School, it is perhaps proper to recall a few facts relating to its origin. For several years past, instruction in mechanical drawing has been given in Beverly in evening classes. On October 21, 1907, the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education, co-operating with the Beverly School Committee, established an Independent Evening Industrial School with courses in machine drawing, architectural drawing and engineering mathematics.
Under the direction of the Superintendent of Schools, Mr. Adelbert L. Safford, assisted by the advice of Mr. Charles H. Morse, Secretary of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education and Mr. Frank Turner, Inspector of Evening Schools, for the commission, the work of the Beverly Evening Industrial School was systematized and developed so that in October, 1908, the School opened under the principal ship of Mr. Walter H. Naylor, with largely increased attendance and classes in machine drawing, freehand industries design, architectural drawing, gas engines, engineering mathematics, shop mathematics, and industrial applied science. The quality of the work in this school was highly commenced by all who examined it. In the meantime, through the effort! Of Mr. Safford, Mr. Morse and Mr. Turner, a local COmmiSSiOl1 on Industrial Education to study the needs of Beverly in this direction was appointed by the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education. This commission was composed of Mr. George H. Vose, Assistant Superintendent in the Beverly factory of the United Shoe Machinery Company, representing manufacturers of machinery; Senator Clifford B. Bray, of the firm of Bray & Stanley, representing shoe manufacturers; Mr. Albert W. Dodge, treasurer of the Carpenters’ Local Union, representing organized labor; Mr. James B. Dow, landscape gardener, representing the various industries allied to agriculture; Miss Annie M. Kilham, representing industrial occupations for women; Mr. Charles A. King, publisher of the Beverly Citizen and secretary of the Beverly Board of Trade, representing the commercial interests of Beverly; Honorable Samuel Cole, member of the Governor’s Council, representing as former member of the School Committee, mayor, representative and senator, various interests to be allied and harmonized in the promotion of the purposes of the commission; Mr. Walter H. Naylor, principal of the Beverly Evening Industrial School and Supervisor of Manual Training; and Mr. Adelbert L. Safford, Superintendent of the Beverly Public Schools. Mr. Safford acted as Secretary of the commission. This commission reported to the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education on May 10, 1909, as follows:
REPORT OF BEVERLY COMMISSION ON INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.
To the Honorable, The Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education:
The Beverly Commission on Industrial Education appointed ‘by your Honorable Board, last October, to investigate the need for industrial education in Beverly and vicinity has been constantly at work upon this problem since its appointment and begs leave to submit the following partial report:
Frequent meetings of this commission have been held for determining methods of procedure and discussing reports of special] investigations and numerous meetings have been held at which representatives of the leading industries were present and discussed with the commission the relations of their respective industries to the matter under investigation.
LEADING INDUSTRIES.
The three leading industries are the manufacture of machinery, the manufacture of shoes, and the group of agricultural pursuits that in the aggregate probably surpasses in importance the manufacture of shoes. The agricultural group includes first, those occupied with landscape architecture and gardening, forestry, floral greenhouses, cultivation of small fruits, flowers and vegetables out of doors, and general farm management,- all for the extensive estates of the summer residents of Beverly and the North Shore; second, a considerable number of farmers engaged chiefly in truck gardening for the local and the Boston market; third, a large number occupied with floral greenhouses, nurseries of shrubs and trees, ferneries and the cultivation of hardy perennials for the market; fourth, an important group of firms engaged in raising vegetables in greenhouses, “farming under glass;” fifth, those occupied with the production of dairy products and with the handling and marketing of milk; sixth, a very large number engaged in poultry raising, many in a small way as a side line and some extensively as a chief occupation.
CONFERENCES WITH AGRICULTURISTS.
Several meetings of this commission have been held at which men engaged in these agricultural lines were present and manifested considerable interest in discussing the need of elementary agricultural training. There are employed on the large estates of summer residents a number of gardeners that were trained in Scotland. These men are remarkably proficient and some of them appeared before this commission and spoke emphatically of the present need of more facilities for education in their line in this country, and made valuable suggestions to the commission in regard to the best methods to be pursued. A public meeting was also held at which Professor Spillman, head of the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture, and Professor Jenks of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, gave addresses.
FARM PRACTICE SCHOOL.
This commission at the present time is engaged in investigating possible provisions for practice in the various agricultural pursuits in case a school should be established. Three lines of investigation are under way the feasibility of establishing a farm practice or training school; the practicability of placing pupils as part time employees (or part time observers and helpers, receiving instruction in return for labor) with different proprietors in the agricultural group; and the possibility of affiliation with the proposed Essex County Agricultural or Farm School. It is hoped that at a later date a definite recommendation can be made to your honorable board for the establishment in Beverly of an agricultural school with ample facilities for real practice in the particular branches of agriculture to be studied.
CONFERENCES WITH SHOE MANUFACTURERS.
Several meetings of this commission have been held at which proprietors of shoe factories were present. All agreed to the great need of better trained shoe workers. The report of the committee recommending the establishment of a school of shoe manufacturing at Lynn was considered by this commission and by the shoe manufacturers that met with the commission. Such a school properly conducted seemed to all very desirable. None of the shoe manufacturers, however, have indicated, thus far, any disposition to materially assist in the industrial training of shoe workers either by contributing money towards its support, or by furnishing shoes to be manufactured and co-operating in the marketing of the manufactured shoes, or by instructing pupils in their several factories.
COMPLICATED CHARACTER OF SHOE MANUFACTURING.
The shoe industry is so highly specialized that any fair knowledge of the whole process of manufacturing a single shoe involves a knowledge of from fifty to seventy-seven different operations or occupations. Often a man spends the whole period of his employment in a shoe factory, working at a single one of these fifty or seventy-five processes.. The matter is still further complicated by the fact that these operations vary with the different systems of machinery used and the different classes of shoes manufactured. There are about three hundred and fifty different kinds of shoe machines in Common use.
In view of the lack of offers of material assistance by the shoe manufacturers and the complicated character of the shoe industry; this commission is not prepared at present m any definite recommendations. The need is apparent, but the best way to supply it is not yet clear to us.
MANUFACTURE OF MACHINERY.
The Manufacture of Machinery is the largest industry of Beverly. Besides the United Shoe Machinery Company, which has about three thousand employees at present, there are several smaller machine shops, and these are likely to increase in number.
Of the persons reported to the Inspector of Factories as employed in Beverly between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, more than one-half were employed by the United Shoe Machinery Company. This company, at the present time, has no apprentice system or plan by which their employees may systematically learn the machinists’ trade. When a new man is employed, he is taught one “job” or process and he may re- main on that “job” as long as he is employed. There is no systematic plan of progress from one process of the industry to another.
CONFERENCES WITH MANUFACTURERS OF MACHINERY
This commission has had several meetings at which representatives of the United Shoe Machinery Company discussed the existing conditions and the opportunities for trained machinists in the shops of this Company. They stated that thoroughly skilled machinists were difficult to secure and that, of those available, a large part had been trained in some foreign country. The representatives of the Company expressed hearty approval of the general principle of industrial education and signified their willingness to co-operate on broad lines and in a substantial way in providing facilities for teaching youths between the ages of fourteen and eighteen the elements of the machinist’s trade.
TYPES OF SCHOOLS FOR MACHINISTS’ APPRENTICES
The commission has made inquiries regarding the private schools for machinists’ apprentices, maintained by several large manufacturers in this and other states, and has learned that usually a young man entering one of these schools must bind himself under bonds for a considerable sum to remain in the school for the complete course, usually for four years. While some wages are paid to them, it is much less than they can earn after a year or two in the school. In other schools, both public and private, the pupils work in the factories one week and go to school the next.
The opinion of the Beverly commission is that the schools in which the pupils are indentured under a forfeit to stay four years are hampered in various ways by this system, and that on the whole these schools are less favorable to the apprentices than to the manufacturers. On the other hand, the pupils that are merely taken into the shops on half time do not seem to receive that systematic and progressive advancement in learning the different parts of the industry that is desirable. The money value of the product of the boy’s labor often seems to be more determinative to the manufacturer than the pupil’s progress in learning the trade. To a certain extent, the pupils are exploited in this way for the benefit of the manufacturer. On the other hand, in a mere school where the work is not carried on under the conditions of a real factory, it is almost impossible for the pupil to attain a practical skill and efficiency equal to that of a good workman in a factory. The workman’s time as a factor in the cost of production, never can be sufficiently demonstrated to a pupil in a mere school where his presence and wages do not depend upon his actual productive ability. Neither can the time that may properly be used and the skill required for the different operations be sufficiently understood by the pupil until the product is put to actual commercial use and the pupil rewarded for his work in proportion to his perception and adjustment of these factors of production. Moreover the establishments of independent factory schools involve a very large expenditure for buildings and equipment and a large cost for maintenance and raw materials. This cost is reduced by the sale of products, but the school is at a serious disadvantage both in the purchasing of raw materials and in the marketing of products. Moreover, an independent factory school must establish and maintain its own standards of efficiency in workmanship and production, and its own esprit de corps among its workmen and its own standards of scholarship and equipment in its school, while the industrial school that is affiliated with a first-class factory on the one hand and a first-class school on the other, without being dominated by either factory or school, has constantly before its pupils the best standards, both industrial and educational, which must be powerful incentives to the pupils of the school.
THE BEVERLY PLAN
There will be found, doubtless, many ways of solving this problem and no one way will in all cases be best, even in the several industries of the same community; but it seems to this commission that an ideal way for Beverly, at least, would be for the manufacturers, on the one hand, to furnish practice shops in connection with existing factories and for the City, on the other hand, to furnish classes fox: theoretical instruction in connection with the schools of the City.
The practice shops in the factories should not be exclusively “in the control of the manufacturers, nor should the theoretical instruction in the schools be exclusively in the control of the school committees. Both shop and school should be controlled by a Committee on Industrial Education under the supervision of the State Commission on Industrial Education. The Committee on Industrial Education should consist of representatives of the various interests involved. It has been suggested that for Beverly, five members of the school committee, the mayor, and one representative of the manufacturer furnishing the practice shop should constitute the Committee on Industrial Education, and that the superintendent of schools should be, ex-officio, secretary and executive officer. The Committee on Industrial Education would then have full charge of the school and shop and all matters pertaining to the same, except that their acts must be approved by the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education in order that the school may receive aid from the state. The manufacturer furnishing the practice shop would reserve the right to withdraw his co-operation upon suitable notice in case he was dissatisfied with the management of the school shop.
The terms on which a manufacturer would co-operate in furnishing a practice shop would be a matter of agreement in each individual install; but in general it ‘is assumed that the manufacturer would furnish the necessary floor-space, power, heat and light, and the machinery and tools pertaining to the equipment. This shop would be operated so far as accounting is concerned as a separate factory. The manufacturer would furnish the raw materials and drawings for the work to be performed, and would purchase at established prices all finished products that passed inspection and were accepted. One-half the piece-price for the product would be paid to the pupil performing the labor and the other half would be devoted to maintenance. ‘ In the accounts, the practice shop would be debited .for the cost of maintenance, including raw materials and instruction, and would be credited by the full value of all productions, and if, in any case, the accounts showed any profit, such profit would be devoted to the support of the school. It is hardly to be supposed, however, that the earnings of the shop would ever even approximate the cost of maintenance. The manufacturer could in no case receive any profits from the labor of the pupils in the school and the pupils would in no way compete with regular employees in the factory. It seems to this commission much better to remunerate pupil-workman by the piece-price of accepted product than by any stated compensation per hour because of the greater stimulus of the piece-price to productive efficiency both in time and workmanship.
CO-OPERATION OF UNITED SHOE MACHINERY COMPANY.
This commission is pleased to report that the United Shoe Machinery Company, through Mr. M. B. Kaven, General Superintendent, has signified its willingness to co-operate in establishing a practice shop on the plan described above. Briefly the plan of co-operation is the following:
A separate department will be organized in the factory of the United Shoe Machinery Company and equipped with all necessary machine tools for the accommodation of twenty-five boys at one time. Two groups of twenty-five will alternate between the factory and the schoolhouse. The company will furnish all materials and keep the accounts as proposed above and purchase the product at established prices. The United Shoe Machinery Company will make up the deficit between the earnings of the practice shop as shown by the accounts described above and the cost of maintenance of the practice shop including the salary of the instructors while in the shop. The hiring of the shop instructor or foreman and the management of the shop will be in the hands of the Committee on Industrial Education, as proposed above.
The Committee on Industrial Education would provide, in the school, instruction in shop mathematics, including the use of micrometers and other instruments of precision, mechanics, chemistry of the different kinds of materials used in the factory, freehand sketches with dimensions, blueprint reading, mechanical drawing, English, civics and industrial economics, business forms and practice. The excellent laboratories and other equipment of the High School would be available for the use of the Indus- trial School afternoons and evenings and a portion of the McKay Street School could be used in the forenoons if required. In this way, excellent buildings and equipment would be available at practically no additional cost to the City of Beverly and the cost of maintenance would be reduced to a minimum.
An initial course in the theory and practice of the machinist’s trade is contemplated. No pupil, however, would be bound by any agreement or indenture to continue to the end of any course. The only entrance requirements for a boy would be that he should have attained the age of fourteen years and should have completed satisfactorily the sixth grade, at least, in the public elementary schools or an equivalent. The requirements of a pupil remaining in the school would be satisfactory conduct and a reasonable degree of proficiency in his work. The greater stress would be laid on the shop work in case of doubt. After the completion of the initial course, advanced courses of one or two years might be taken, such as the following:
Specialization in some branch of the machinist’s trade, pattern making, molding and casting, forging, tempering, machine drawing and inventing, factory accounting, salesman- ship and setting up and demonstrating machines, foreign salesmanship and the commercial use of Spanish or some other foreign language.
RECOMMENDATION THAT SCHOOL BE ESTABLISHED.
The Beverly Commission on Industrial Education, if your Honorable Board approves of the plans set forth above, desires to recommend to the Mayor and City Council of Beverly that immediate action be taken to establish a school for machinists along the lines indicated. It is thought best to have the industrial school for machinists in session whenever the factory is in operation. This would mean that the school would be in session practically twelve months in the year. It seems desirable, therefore, that the school year should begin July 1st.
The Beverly Commission on Industrial Education is desirous of having this school in operation July 1, 1909, or as soon there- after as possible. Any advice or assistance from your Honorable Board will be gratefully received by this commission, which respectfully submits this report for your consideration.
The Beverly Commission on Industrial Education: George H. Vose, Chairman; Adelbert L. Safford, Secretary; Clifford B. Bray; Samuel Cole; Albert W. Dodge; James B. Dow; Annie M. Kilham; Charles A. King; Walter H. Naylor; Beverly, Mass., May 10, 1909.
On May 18, 1909, Alderman James A; Torrey introduced the following order in the Board of Aldermen:
CITY OF BEVERLY
Board of Aldermen, May 18, 1909.
Ordered, That an Independent Industrial School be and is hereby established in Beverly in accordance with Chapter 505 of the Acts of 1906, as supplemented by Chapter 572 of the Acts of 1908, for the purpose of instructing youths between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one years in day or evening classes in the machinist’s trade or in such other industrial trades or occupations as shall be deemed expedient by the Board of Trustees of said Industrial School, and also for the purpose of instructing any persons already employed in the industries in evening classes in such industrial trades or occupations as shall be deemed expedient by the Board of Trustees of said Industrial School.
The management and control of the Beverly Independent Industrial School and of all property pertaining to the same shall be vested in a Board of Trustees, consisting of his Honor the Mayor of Beverly, five members of the Beverly School Committee to be designated each year by the chairman of the School Committee, one or more citizens of Beverly appointed for a term of three years by his Honor the Mayor, as follows: Each proprietor of an industry who shall provide facilities satisfactory to the Board of Trustees for the practice work of pupils of the School shall be represented by one member of the Board of Trustees nominated by the proprietor of the industry and appointed by the Mayor.
The Board of Trustees of the Beverly Independent Industrial School shall be authorized to accept the co-operation of the School Committee, and to occupy and use school property with the permission of the School Committee and to enter into such arrangements of co-operation with proprietors of the various industries as the Board of Trustees shall deem expedient.
The Board of Trustees shall be authorized to elect a secretary and executive officer and all other necessary officers and teachers and to fix their salaries.
The Board of Trustees shall conduct all the affairs of the Beverly Independent Industrial School in such a manner as to receive the approval of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education and. to entitle the City of Beverly to be reimbursed by the Commonwealth for such portion of the cost of maintenance of the Industrial School as is provided by the laws of the Commonwealth.
This order passed both branches without amendment, and was signed June 26, 1909.
EVENING INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL
Owing to confusion in interpreting the laws relating to the establishment of industrial schools, to the abolishment of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education, and to other causes, the expected reimbursement from the State on account of the evening industrial school has not been made. The order of the City Council signed June 26, 1909, in effect established a day industrial school arid re-established the evening industrial school as a department of the day industrial school. However, no appropriation was made for an evening industrial school for the season of 1909-10, and consequently this work was discontinued. I shall recommend a suitable sum to be appropriated for carrying on this evening work for next year. This evening school reaches a class of young workmen who could not have the advantages of a day industrial school, and partially makes up that deficiency and affords them great assistance in advancing in their trade.
VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION
Our Beverly Industrial School is a source of much pride to me and pleasure as well inasmuch as it not only gives a practical education to young men, but tends to make useful citizens of those of whom we have been neglectful heretofore.
It seems to have been our sole aim prior to this to devote every attention to cultural education. In many cases parents have even denied themselves the necessities of life in order that their sons might get the best advantages for a higher education, that would fit them for positions in a bank, a large mercantile establishment, or for the learned professions of the .law, the ministry and medicine.
We seem to have forgotten, until now the fact that all are not constituted alike. We need men trained fully as accurately and carefully in the art of manufacturing and tilling the soil as in the professions. Today we need men who can do things, men who can create not only with the brain-and it takes brains to be a good mechanic or a good farmer in this age-but with skilled hands as well. The day has passed when the father who was a farmer taught his son, and the village smith taught his apprentices, and young men in general served time to learn the different trades. This is all changed in order to meet the different conditions of life. It seems to me that we who boast our great country and free institutions should blush with shame when we consider that we are much behind the countries of Europe.
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