HIS 102 Lecture Notes - Bsc Young Boys, Extortion, Ninetynine
Document Summary
Apprentices were not paid; they lived in their master"s house, under his parental authority, and were not free to leave until their indenture was up--often 4 to 7 years. They watched their master"s work, performed menial tasks, and gradually picked up the secrets and mysteries of the trade. By the end of their apprenticeship at about 18 years of age they expected to know the trade well enough to be useful. Between the revolution and the 1820s the american economy grew so dramatically that local shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, locksmiths all kinds of traditional craftsmen could not keep up with demand. Ambitious and innovative masters changed the way they ran their shops; they enlarged the scale of operations, subdivided tasks, fashioned new machinery, and farmed out unskilled "piece" work such as sewing together shoes. Output rose, prices fell, competition forced down wages, and the master became more of an entrepreneur than a fatherly mentor to future craftsmen.
