The saddest part of the trades currently, is the way we treat our help. Honestly, Im as guilty as anyone else.
I never looked deeply into the history of building. Well, not true. I fall asleep reading books on old tools, furniture , blacksmithing, timberframing... whatever I can find. But, I don't know what happened to the apprenticeship, journeyman, master progression.
I've read a lot about the civil war, and my impression is it started to die out, around then, probably to be finished off by around World War I. Im making a Wild Guess.
Does anyone know of any good source of information, on how people were brought into the trades, back when?
Ive seen a lot of stuff in the trades, a lot of it, has been a hoot. But, the things that'll bother me the most in the end, might not be the customers.
It may be all the new guys, who got kleenx'd at the end of the job. Some of them were the best part of going to work. But at the end of many jobs, when the grunt work ran low, not to mention budgets, they were the first let go, without any warning.
Often instead of these guys being told honestly, why they where getting the boot. They were made to believe it was for their own shortcomings, instead of the hard truth...
Anyway, it would be nice, if somehow, someone, could find a way to make it economically feasible for small operators to train and retain new people in the trades. The current way, which is how I learned the trade, is a trial, not to be recommended.