TRAINING APPRENTICES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2597, 3 September 1909, Page 2

TRAINING APPRENTICES.

Bismarck bent liis powerful mind to the task of co-ordination, and the result is that. Germany now stands supreme in the education and technical training of her ,people. There is no talk there of the training of apprentices at trade schools “taxing employers." It is absolutely compulsory, and. since 1891 the communes have had power to enforce this compulsion even where the State law does not, and tmployers have to let all young persons have sufficient time out of working hours to attend the schools. The law 'is not on the ‘Statute Bool* to be laughed at. It is enforced by reprimand, fine, and even imprisonment. The Germans recognise that the State wants men who are efficient workmen—not “hands’ —and there are trade schools for every conceivable calling in which men .labor tor their daily bread. There are nearly half a million students at the technical and trade schools of the Fatherland, and they turn out the most skilled workers on the Continent. Germany s great industrial army has been raised in the schools, and the point for us to remember is that attendance at them is compulsory on the apprentice, anti concession time is compulsory on the employer:—Wellington “Times.”