Author(s): | Cronin, Bernard |
---|---|
Reviewer(s): | Sanderson, Michael |
Published by EH.NET (July 2002)
Bernard Cronin, Technology, Industrial Conflict and the Development of
Technical Education in Nineteenth-Century England. Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing, 2001. xiii + 301 pp. $99.95 (hardback), ISBN: 0-7546-0313-x.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Michael Sanderson, Department of History, University of
East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Most writing on the subject of English technical education in the later
nineteenth century relates it to the question of Britain’s relative economic
decline. Bernard Cronin takes a different and original approach in placing the
resistance to technical education in the context of the clash of interests
between employers and unions over technical change in mechanical engineering.
His argument is that handcraft in engineering was revolutionized by the
introduction of more precise measurement and machine tools by Maudslay, Nasmyth
and Whitworth. Most important was the turret lathe enabling the carrying out of
a range of formerly skilled operations by relatively less skilled labor. The
process was helped on by the work of F.W. Taylor with his techniques of
scientific management, slide rules, stop watches, work control and rate fixing
with “assembly” replacing the more skilled “fitting.” In consequence there was
a change in the balance of labor from the skilled to the unskilled. This suited
the employers as cheapening labor and raising productivity. Also since the
“aristocracy of labor” unions controlled entry to trades through
apprenticeship, any lessening of the need for long apprenticeship weakened the
power of the craft unions. With machine tools a de-qualified, non-unionized,
young labor force could be drawn into machine manning. All this led to the
“decline of apprenticeship” much deplored in contemporary writing of the 1890s
and 1900s. This culminated in the long and widespread engineering strike of
1897-98, resulting in victory for the employers who increasingly came to
articulate the view that their management and administration mattered more than
the manual labor of their artisans in the creation of wealth.
All this had implications for education and the employers’ attitudes towards
it. The victory over the 1897-98 strike reinforced employers’ negative view of
technical education. They were increasingly suspicious of apprenticeship as a
racket leaving too much power in the hands of their skilled employees. On the
other hand they were skeptical of technical education in technical colleges as
a separate sphere from the workplace, controlled by college lecturers with a
dubious grasp of manufacturing practice. What they preferred was limited
part-time evening class work minimizing the diversion of workers’ time or
employers’ cost. Few employers were interested in the Royal Commission on
Technical Education or the subsequent Act of 1889 placing technical instruction
in the hands of local authorities and not to include “teaching the practice of
any trade or industry or employment.” The state’s assumption, and that of the
City and Guilds of London Institute, was that complementary practical training
was carried out by industry itself. Yet Cronin argues that it was not, since
employers were more concerned to weaken the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
and apprenticeship than reinforce technical training. Looking forward to the
present Cronin finds echoes of these nineteenth-century problems in the
Finniston Report’s criticism of the neglect of technical education by employers
and the linked further decline of apprenticeship and the trade unions in the
1980.
Two elements in the argument give me pause. Firstly, while one can see the
employer suspicion of apprenticeship, it is not clear why they did not
wholeheartedly pursue the alternative strategy of building up the technical
college as the alternative to undermine the apprenticeship system and skilled
artisan control. This reliance on publicly funded, large colleges with high
prestige was much more a feature of the French and German systems where unions
were weaker anyway. Also the English trade unions were suspicious of technical
colleges and their qualifications, which they saw as a threat to their own hard
won, controlled entry, craft skills with the wage differentials they enjoyed in
consequence. The long dispute of the Plumbers Union and the City and Guilds was
indicative of this. Linked with this I was not quite convinced by Cronin’s
assertion that the workers themselves were keener on technical education than
the employers were. Yet the evidence he cites tends to be institutions short
lived or provided by the middle classes.
One of the strengths of the book is that before becoming a tutor with the Open
University Cronin was himself a five-year apprentice-trained engineer with a
first hand knowledge of tools, metal types and procedures. Historians who find
some of his exposition of this a bit detailed and technical in the early pages
should nonetheless persevere.
The book is well researched. attested by its thirty-two page bibliography. But
I sense that Cronin is not so well briefed on more recent secondary literature
of the 1990s since use could have been made of several items (Evans and
Summerfield, Divall, 1990; Elbaum, Divall, Gospel, 1991; Guagnini, Gospel,
1993), which would have enriched his theme. Above all there should have been
some reference to the seminal article by Stephen Nicholas of 1985 on the
dilemma of college and apprentice training.
But this is a good and interesting book in a valuable series, which expertly
explores a further dimension of a much-visited subject.
Dr. Michael Sanderson is Reader in History in the University of East Anglia
with an interest in educational history. Recent publications include The
Missing Stratum: Technical School Education in England, 1900-1990s (Athlone
Press, 1994); Education and Economic Decline, 1870-1990s (Cambridge
University Press, 1999), and The History of the University of East Anglia,
1918-2000 (Hambledon and London Press, 2002).
Subject(s): | Labor and Employment History |
---|---|
Geographic Area(s): | Europe |
Time Period(s): | 20th Century: Pre WWII |