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Corporation Schooling and the Labor Market at General Electric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Shan Nelson-Rowe
Shan Nelson-Rowe*
Affiliation:
Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey
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Extract

As the twentieth century opened, many corporate leaders viewed with dismay the failure of manual training and trade schools to supply an army of skilled workers. Business people especially disliked industrial education programs offered through public school systems, and targeted trade unions and educators alike for criticism. Thomas E. Donnelley of R. R. Donnelley and Sons in Chicago, for example, charged that labor unions gained “representation upon the board of managers (of public schools) for the avowed purpose of seeing that their own monopolistic advantages are not jeopardized.” The chief educational spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) characterized public education as “an incapable, semi-ignorant, headless jumble.” The problem, he claimed, stemmed from the training of “the schoolmaster… [who was] uninformed in the needs and direction of the School of Life.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Spring 1991 , pp. 27 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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3. The term “corporation school” was used to cover a variety of employee-training programs conducted by business. These programs included training for management, engineering, and the skilled trades. I will limit my discussion to an analysis of the training of skilled workers by corporations, or what were also known as “factory apprenticeships.”Google Scholar

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24. Fischer, Paul, personal interview with the author, 27 June 1985.Google Scholar

25. All references in this section to the records of specific apprentices or groups of apprentices not otherwise noted are from the apprentice graduate files in the apprentice office at General Electric, Lynn, Mass.Google Scholar

26. General Electric Company, “The Apprentice System of the General Electric Company at West Lynn, Massachusetts” (West Lynn, 1902; 1917).Google Scholar

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30. National Industrial Conference Board, Wages in the United States, 1914–1931 (New York, 1931), tables 4–7.Google Scholar

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33. Ibid. Google Scholar

34. Marquis, , “Record of Apprentices for the Year 1921” (General Electric Company, Schenectady, 1922).Google Scholar

35. “Apprentice System of the Lynn Works” (General Electric Company, 1931); “The Apprentice System of the Lynn Works” (General Electric Company, 1942).Google Scholar

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37. Thernstrom, Stephan, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970 (Cambridge, 1973), 50; “Apprentice System of the Lynn Works” (General Electric Company, 1931).Google Scholar

38. Marquis, C. F., “Record of Apprentices for the Year 1915” (General Electric Company, Schenectady, 1916), 2; idem, “Record of Apprentices for the Year 1916” (General Electric Company, Schenectady, 1917), 2.Google Scholar

39. “Apprentice System of the General Electric Lynn Works” (General Electric, 1931 and 1942).Google Scholar

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41. Tripp, Charles K., “Our Apprentice School,” Lynn Works News 1 (15 May 1919).Google Scholar

42. Alternatively, GE may have retained fewer graduates either because they were “stolen” by other firms that avoided the costs of training by offering slightly higher wages, or because many graduates were unqualified. Company officials voiced no such complaints, however. Instead, it appears that GE foremen and superintendents were able to pick the “cream of the crop,” or at least apprentice graduates who were well qualified by company standards.Google Scholar

43. On Fitchburg High School see Ringel, Paul J., “Industrial Education in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 1908–1928,” in Schools and Cities: Consensus and Conflict in American Educational History, ed. Goodenow, Ronald K. and Ravitch, Diane (New York, 1983); and Nelson-Rowe, Shan, “Markets, Politics and Professions: The Rise of Vocationalism in American Education” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1988), 180–89. On the Pratt Institute see Nelson-Rowe, , “Markets, Politics, and Professions,” 159–79. On commercial education see Kantor, , Learning to Earn, ch. 7.Google Scholar