Law looked with distinct favour on apprenticeship, and always regarded it as a beneficial contract.

The period of apprenticeship usually covers a substantial number of years; and as the master is apt to find an apprentice more bother than he is worth during the earlier years, he usually wants some security that the apprentice will not leave as soon as his services became valuable. For this purpose the apprentice's father or some other responsible adult is usually made a party to the instrument of apprenticeship, and then if the apprentice does not finish his term of years, the father or other guarantor can be made to pay damages. Under the terms of the Employers and Workmen Act, 1875 (see p. 323), the Court may order an apprentice to perform his duties, and if he fails for one month to do so the Court may send him to prison for not more than fourteen days. On the other hand, an apprentice may appeal to the Court if he thinks his master is not fulfilling his obligations, and the Court has power to rescind the instrument of apprenticeship and, if it thinks just so to do, to order the whole or any part of the premium to be repaid. These special powers are given to magistrates where there is either no premium or the premium does not exceed £25.

The subdivision of adult labour has rendered apprenticeship nearly obsolete. There is no object in apprenticing a boy or girl who is only going to learn one or two operations, in which a few months' practice will give adequate dexterity.

The modern employer in general also objects to being bound by a definite obligation to teach. The utmost that employers in trades under the Trades Boards Act have been willing to grant in return for a graduated scale of wages to beginners has been reasonable 'facilities for learning.' As a result of fixing a fairly high wage for absolute beginners, some employers insist on the learner signing an agreement to stay at work for a certain number of years, generally not less than two; but this form of agreement expresses no obligation on the part of the employer to teach, and though sometimes spoken of as apprenticeship, differs from it in that essential point.

Form of Contract-Stamps-Statute of Frauds.-The contract between a master and servant may be verbal or in writing, or partly verbal and partly in writing.

Written agreements usually require to be stamped with a sixpenny stamp, but there is an exemption in favour of an agreement for the hire of a labourer, artificer, manufacturer, or menial servant. This exemption obviously does not cover the case of clerks or shop-assistants or other nonmanual workers. Where the agreement covers other matters besides hiring it may require to be stamped on that account.

If the hiring is for more than a year, or for a year to commence from a future day, it is a contract within the Statute of Frauds." Before any legal proceedings can be taken upon it, the terms of the contract must be reduced to writing and signed by the party to be charged therewith. Contracts of service for long periods (two or three years) are not unusual when a master wishes to make sure of the services of some particular servant. They should of course be in writing, and the workman should see that the master is under the same obligation to find work for him as he is to perform any work given out during the stated period.

Substance of Contract. The substantial terms of a contract of service are a matter for individual bargaining. Such bargaining must comply with any statutory enactments governing the relationship of master and servant, and must not contain terms which are immoral or “against public policy," but is otherwise absolutely unfettered. Thus a master cannot agree with his servant that he shall work on a dangerous machine in a factory without the machine being fenced, for that would be an infringement of the Factory Act. So also he could not legally hire a man to break into a rival's factory and smash his machines, for that would be a criminal matter.

Individual and Collective Bargaining.-What is known as collective bargaining has of recent years become a matter of very great importance, and in Chapter XX. we shall see what the law has done to make the system of collective bargaining through Trade Unions effective; but in spite of this legislation the phrase 'collective

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bargaining' is descriptive and not legally accurate. collective bargain means an agreement as to terms of service between a group of men and one or more masters. As each man subsequently enters into a contract of service with a master he makes a legal contract, which is individual even when it incorporates the terms of a collective agreement. Thus, suppose there is a strike of carpenters in Coventry, and it is ultimately agreed that the men shall return to work on July 1 at 1od. an hour, with an increase of a halfpenny an hour on the following January 1. If on October 1 a member of the Carpenters' Union is taken on by a builder belonging to the federation of employers which settled the strike on these terms, then very probably a Court of Law would say that the bargain between the parties was for 10d. an hour up to December 31, and then for 10 d., even though those terms were not specifically mentioned, because the individual bargain between the builder and the carpenter can most reasonably be interpreted by reference to the collective bargain made at the close of the strike. If, on the other hand, the carpenter were taken on by the owner of a cycle factory who paid him 10d. an hour up to December 31, and then, being entirely ignorant of the collective bargain, paid him on January 7 another week's wages at the same rate, the carpenter would have considerable difficulty in satisfying a Court of Law that he was entitled to 10 d. an hour. Further, it is quite clear that if the carpenter, through being long out of work, or for any other reason, chose to accept 91d. an hour, the bargain would be a perfectly legal one, though possibly the master or his carpenter might incur expulsion from the Association or Trade Union. A contract of service is therefore an individual bargain, though it may contain by reference, express or implied, the terms of a collective bargain.

Terms of the Contract of Service. The most important terms of the contract will be (I.) the wages to be paid, (II.) the hours to be worked, and (III.) the conditions under which the contract can be put an end to.

I. WAGES AND WAGE SYSTEMS

As regards wages, there are many methods of remuneration in use, and for a detailed description of them the reader is referred to Schloss on Methods of Industrial Remuneration, but a short account of those chiefly adopted to-day, as far as the writer's experience goes, may be of

some use.

(a) Weekly Time-wage.-This is the usual form of remuneration for non-manual servants, such as shop-assistants, typists, junior clerks, etc. There is a normal working week, but as a rule overtime to a reasonable extent must be worked without extra remuneration (except perhaps tea-money '), but in return holidays will be paid for. It is also applied to manual labourers whose duties are of a varied nature, such as a porter or a packer, and to persons like tram-drivers and tram-conductors. In these cases the number of hours worked in the week is usually fixed, and overtime is paid for, and there is little practical difference between system (a) and system (b).

(b) An Hourly Time-wage.-In the case of skilled artisans, bricklayers, carpenters, painters, engineers of various kinds, and also in the case of the general labourers of several trades, wages are fixed at so much per hour, and the weekly wages are a product of the number of hours worked and the hourly wage-rate. Overtime is paid for as a matter of course, and by the custom of the trade or the shop it may carry with it an extra remuneration, say of 25 per cent or 50 per cent, which is usually called time and a quarter, time and a half, etc.

(c) Piece-work.-Here the basis of the payment is a unit of work and not a unit of time. The unit of work is ultimately fixed by reference to the standard time-rate, and is generally supposed to yield an average piece-worker about 'time and a quarter.' Apparently when piece-work was first introduced the offer of the price came from the workman, and if it turned out to be disadvantageous he had only himself to blame. There are some Trade Unions which have been able to maintain this rule. It will be seen later on that modern variations place the fixing of piece-rates

with the employer, and one of the objections to the introduction of these modern systems is that it is more advantageous to the workmen to offer a piece-rate and let the master show cause for cutting it down than for them to have to try to increase a piece-rate fixed by the master.

If the piece-work job is a long one, possibly lasting several days, or running into more weeks than one, the workman will want to draw a weekly sum on account. In this way he may possibly get into debt to his master, and this debt must be made good out of future piece-work earnings. Doing work for which payment has already been made is sometimes called, ' working a dead horse.'

(d) Piece-work combined with a Guaranteed Time-rate.Under this system the worker is paid for the hours he actually works at the agreed or standard time-rate, and in addition he is free to earn a balance on piece-rates. Where the piecerates are so fixed as to give an average workman about time and a quarter, a workman who does not earn any balance is obviously an inferior worker, and in some works if he 'gets into debt' two weeks in succession he is dismissed. Where this or some similar rule is not in force and workmen are free to get into debt, there are variations of the system according as each job stands by itself, or a debt on one job is carried forward and set off against a balance on another. Under the latter system a man who incurs a debt of any considerable amount knows that however hard he works his balances will only go to reduce his debt, and he becomes dissatisfied and usually leaves without waiting to be dismissed. The writer has known at least one works where the piece-rates only gave a balance to exceptionally quick workers, and some of the workers were in debt for a large proportion of their timewages but were not dismissed. In a case like this the system is really a time-wage system with prizes for exceptionally gifted workmen. The piece-work rates are fixed by the employer, and works discipline is on the same lines as where time-wages prevail.

(e) Premium Bonus Systems.-Under these systems a time allowance is made for each job, and in any case the worker receives his time-rate for the whole time spent over