Ryan on De Munck, Kaplan and Soly, eds., _Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship_

[Book Reviews in Economic and Business History]

Published by EH.NET (September 2008)

Bert De Munck, Steven L. Kaplan and Hugo Soly, editors, _Learning on the 
Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship_. New York: 
Berghahn, 2007. ix + 232 pp. $70 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-84545-341-1.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Paul Ryan, Department of Management, King’s 
College London.


This collection comes from a conference held in 2000. The delay in 
publication is attributed to various disruptions. It is the twelfth 
volume in the series _International Studies in Social History_, which is 
edited by Marcel van der Linden.

Its publication responds to the extensive contemporary interest in 
apprenticeship -- among historians, as part of discussions of the role 
of guilds, proto-industrialization and social change; and among policy 
analysts, reflecting the benefits of apprenticeship for school-to-work 
transitions, notably in Germany.

The editors, De Munck, Kaplan and Soly, hold appointments at the 
Universities of Antwerp, Cornell and Brussels (Vrije Universiteit), 
respectively. They have divided their tasks in an unusual way. De Munck 
and Soly provide an extensive introduction. Kaplan contributes a lively 
and acute, if florid, set of “afterthoughts,” analyzing the key issues 
and the evidence on display, and suggesting directions for further 
research. Of the eight intervening papers, seven cover European 
historical experiences: in broad chronological order, coopers and 
painters in fifteenth century Flanders (Stabel), various guilds in the 
Dutch golden age (Davids), Antwerp cabinet makers (De Munck), drawing 
schools in pre-revolutionary France (Crowston), Viennese weavers and 
purse makers (Steidl), textiles, metals and construction apprenticeship 
in Germany (Reith), and brewers in Victorian England (Reinarz). The 
remaining paper, on training in Japan (Nagata), extends the collection 
dramatically -- and oddly, given its pole position in the collection, in 
its forced treatment of contemporary employee training in large 
companies as a form of apprenticeship.

Most contributors subscribe to a revisionist historical view of 
apprenticeship, as less monolithic, standardized and guild-regulated, 
and more determined by economic factors, than in traditional 
interpretations, notably the _ganze Haus_ perspective of the German 
historical school. Both individually and collectively, the papers 
document the heterogeneity of apprenticeship. Thus contract durations 
and completion rates are shown to have varied considerably, even within 
particular occupations in particular towns in particular periods, 
despite clear guild prescriptions.

To what extent should apprenticeship be interpreted in economic rather 
than in social terms, and is investment in skills its key function? 
Disagreements on these issues appear to have produced a lively 
conference. For Crowston, the social and educational functions of 
apprenticeship predominate. Among those emphasizing the economic 
functions of apprenticeship, Steidl and Reinartz both emphasize skill 
acquisition; De Munck, its potential as a signal of quality in the 
product market; Reith, production and wage labor rather than learning. 
Several contributions provide evidence in favor of a financial market 
failure interpretation of the apprenticeship contract, in which contract 
durations and premia are seen as jointly determined, within a 
market-oriented relationship, so as to ensure that the master’s training 
costs are recouped before the end of the contract. The evidence is a 
recurrently noted inverse relationship between duration and premium: a 
larger premium purchased a shorter training period.

A central theme is the relationship between the guild system and 
apprenticeship, traditionally taken to be close, and the degree to which 
guild restrictions hurt economic performance. Davids presents evidence 
of extensive disjuncture between the two in the Dutch golden age: some 
occupations were organized by a guild but lacked apprenticeship, while 
others had apprenticeship but were not subject to any guild-based 
regulation. De Munck shows that the Antwerp cabinetmakers’ guild 
actually adopted an inclusive and expansive stance, welcoming skilled 
labor from other towns and countries. Stabel and Davids find that guild 
regulations were typically confined to the control of entry, in terms of 
the registration of new apprentices, the number of apprentices, and 
payment of the requisite fees; other details, including the apprentice’s 
length of service, and the compensation and training received, were 
left, whether by default or by disregard, to negotiation between the 
parties to the contract.

The growth of wage payments to apprentices has traditionally been read 
as evidence of the decay of apprenticeship as an institution. Reith’s 
interpretation focuses on increases in the scale of production and in 
the productive contributions of apprentices. It neglects however a 
simple economic interpretation: viz. that it was the very decline of 
living in (i.e., by the apprentice in the master’s household) that 
caused the conversion of a payment in kind (board and lodging) into a 
cash payment (the apprentice wage). In that case, the growth of waged 
apprenticeship might well have represented the decay of the social 
functions of apprenticeship, in terms of youth socialization and 
control. Reinarz’ study of apprentices in brewing in Victorian England 
suggests that living in was not necessary for youth morality to be 
supervised by the employer-master, but the apprentices in question were 
potential gentleman managers, not manual workers.

The collection illustrates frequently the frustratingly opaque nature of 
apprenticeship, particularly in terms of what apprentices did and had 
done to them in the workplace. The difficulty is compounded by 
uncertainty as to the meaning and scope of “apprenticeship,” which in 
places (Introduction, Nagata) is treated functionally, and confusingly, 
as coterminous with on-the-job learning, rather than as an 
occupationally focused and externally regulated subset thereof.

More useful is the contrast drawn by both Crowston and Reinartz between 
apprenticeship, as experiential learning, and classroom-based 
instruction, as academic learning, and viewed at the time as alternative 
modes of learning. By contrast, for apprentice surgeons in seventeenth 
century Holland, technical education and production-based learning were 
treated as complementary rather than alternative ways of learning -- as 
nowadays in most national apprenticeship systems.

The papers all present evidence, some of it statistical, drawn from the 
archives of guilds, charities, towns, etc. The diversity of evidence is 
refreshing. A recurrent problem, however, is over-generalization, in 
terms of the load-bearing potential of the evidence. Thus Steidl 
concludes that apprenticeship was “very efficient,” as a source of 
economic dynamism, but her evidence on contract duration and 
completions, while interesting in itself, hardly sustains so strong a 
conclusion. Some findings potentially conflict with the evidence 
provided. Stabel’s inference that apprentices were widely used as cheap 
labor in late medieval Flanders sits uneasily with his evidence that 
masters typically trained only one or two apprentices in a full 
lifetime. Such phrases as “it is probable that,” “is likely to have had” 
and “it can be assumed that” occur frequently, as part of a tendency to 
draw broad conclusions from limited evidence.

The coverage of a conference volume is inevitably limited by its 
contributors’ interests. Topics that are not represented include 
collective action by apprentices (e.g., in the streets of seventeenth 
century London) and the rituals associated with apprenticeship (in 
England, the Shrove Tuesday “holiday,” when public misbehavior by 
apprentices was sanctioned).

Among the striking details on view are: the demarcation challenge posed 
by rag and bone merchants to Antwerp’s guild of cabinet makers (De 
Munck); a posited link between Madame Bovary and apprenticeship 
(Kaplan); and Steidl’s enthusiasm over the enrolment books for female 
apprentices kept by the Viennese silk weavers’ guild (“these are 
marvelous sources”).


Paul Ryan is Professor of Labour Economics and Training in the 
Department of Management, King’s College London (paul.ryan at kcl.ac.uk). 
His publications include “Apprentice Strikes in Twentieth Century UK 
Engineering and Shipbuilding,” _Historical Studies in Industrial 
Relations_, Autumn 2004.

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