Apprenticeship

During the colonial period and the early nineteenth century, many young men indentured themselves as apprentices to master craftsmen for a period of approximately seven years before moving on to the status of journeyman (a skilled craftsman who had finished his apprenticeship but had not yet opened his own shop). Apprenticeship served as an important social institution, providing young men with practical and moral training, while also serving as a vehicle for social control and citizenship training. Apprenticeship also upheld the hierarchical structure of society. Young men at this stage of their lives learned codes of masculine prerogative grounded in the ideals of manly republican citizenship and the independent producer.

Apprenticeship was embedded in late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century republicanism, in which manliness and citizenship were understood to be based on property ownership and the resulting political and economic independence. Republican political theory contended that the economic independence enjoyed by master craftsmen ensured their political independence by rendering them impervious to corrupting influence and inclining them toward political virtue (the ability to act toward the common good, as opposed to narrow self-interest). Apprentices and other dependents, conversely, were considered unready for the privileges of republican citizenship. Living in and sustained by the households of master craftsmen, apprentices were to learn the workings of a hierarchical republican social order and prepare themselves to assume the status of master craftsman, household head, independent citizen, and property owner.

Apprenticeship was also an essential component of traditional artisanal craft culture, a male institution that, like [Page 32]republicanism, reinforced patriarchal social hierarchies. By requiring an extended period of training in a craft and requiring that the apprentice achieve mastery before opening shop as an independent producer, it insured quality of production, provided a role model for the apprentice, and encouraged the apprentice to develop the sense of manly pride that was to become a foundation of his own artisanal manhood. Apprenticeship also served as an instrument of social control by providing moral guidance for young men within a system of paternal relationships. The apprentice was to emerge from this system fully prepared both for economic independence and republican citizenship.

Apprenticeship began at about the age of fourteen, when a boy would indenture himself to a master craftsman, pledging obedience and dependence in exchange for training and room and board. Living with masters, apprentices worked alongside journeymen while they learned their trades. At the end of their indentures, they were given a suit of clothes and their wages as journeymen, thus passing into manhood.

Apprenticeship continued to function as a socializing institution in young men's lives as long as traditional artisanal culture remained a viable method of production and employment. However, social and economic changes during the Revolutionary period and the early nineteenth century had a profound impact on the role of apprenticeship in young men's lives.

The American Revolution altered the hierarchical relationship of master and apprentice in several ways. First, it provided expanded opportunities for young men. Boycotts of British goods created an increased demand for colonial production of finished goods, which increased the demand for skilled journeymen and apprentices in master craft workshops. This new demand for labor changed the power dynamic in the artisanal workshop by enhancing the bargaining power of journeymen and apprentices. In addition, the army lured many young men out of workshops with promises of higher wages and patriotic adventure. Although state laws varied regarding private property and masters' rights to the labor of their apprentices, they generally allowed apprentices to enlist (often with half of their pay going to their masters). Masters were also often allowed to send apprentices in their place as substitutes for military service. Such practices disrupted the traditional artisanal culture and hierarchy.

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