At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not purchase additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to a local manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training foremen and specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy (Massachusetts) Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part of the instruction given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. This company is giving instruction to a selected group of workers under pay for a full industrial day of ten hours. A night shift of training for eleven hours is also given to another group of men. Instructors are training an assigned group of operators on regular production and under usual employment conditions. Some part-time instruction in technical subjects, and in some cases on special operations, is also given to certain groups of selected workers while under employment in the plant. This plan has a significance worthy of attention after the war.
General Manager Smith of this company, at a conference of state administrators of vocational schools held the middle of July in New York City, made an interesting statement as to the need of trained help in the shipyards. A summary of his remarks follows:[2]
For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building trades offer little advantage over intelligent untrained men, as the character of work in the shipbuilding industry is so different from that in the building trades.
However, industrial and trade schools can give preliminary and thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. The course for the latter should include ship-drafting. More limited instruction can be given in other ironworkers' trades and in the shipwright trades.
Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be employed in the plant and, if so, should have full power to instruct and should not be employed on production, as the best results in instruction can only be obtained by having the instructor concentrate his mind on his work.
Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our smaller industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately met, the industry will be one of our most important ones.
Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuilding, practically one half will be expended on labor in the shipyard; the remainder is for material purchased from outside parties, but which at the works of such subcontractors is again largely labor. Of the labor expended in the shipyard about one third is for ironworkers, and it is in this trade that the greatest shortage occurs, as there is only a small percentage of men for the ironworkers' trade now to be found in this country.