ARTIZANS. In this country it is cus tomary when a young artisan has served his apprenticeship, for him to enter at once as a journeyman ; to settle down in some town, usually where he has been apprenticed ; and there work for any master who will employ him. Among the less respectable workmen, or when trade in general is dull, the tramp system is acted on ; the artisan goes from town to town, a sort of homeless wanderer, seeking work wherever it may be found, and often forced to associate with disreputable companions.
But in Germany the custom is different. There a kind of tramp-system is not merely looked forward to, but is compulsory. The wanderschaft of a German workman is a tran sition period between the life of an apprentice and that of a master. In many parts both of Germany and Switzerland, an apprentice can not obtain his freedom and become a master' until he has spent a certain number of years in following his calling beyond his native country. He is furnished on setting out with a book called a wander-bach, in which his various employers insert certificates of his service and conduct. In his wanderings he is generally assisted and succoured, not only by the trade to which he belongs, but by the donations of travellers. Many English tra vellers in Germany must have encountered these young workmen, trudging along the roads, with knapsack on back. Mr. Symonds, (` Arts and Artisans, at Home and Abroad ') states that, while certain evils arise from this system, it tends on the other hand to give the young men an amount of general information more varied and extensive than is commonly met with among English workmen.
In the Vorarlberg (a part of the Austrian do minions) the male inhabitants are accustomed to leave home early in the spring, go to Switzer land and France, exercise the trades of masons and house-builders during the summer, live with the utmost possible frugality, and return to the Vorarlberg in autumn with the savings of their labour.
The silk-weavers of Lyons have a very strict system of classification. There are small masters, workmen, and apprentices ; besides the capitalist-manufacturers who set all to work. The masters, or chefs d'ateliers, are owners of a few looms, and have fixed resi dences. The workmen, or compaynons, have neither capital, looms, nor houses ; they work the looms belonging to the master, live and board with him, and receive half the money gained by the looms they work—the other half going for house-rent, risk, wear and tear of machinery, &c. The apprentices are from 15 to 20 years of age ; they are taught by the chefs d'atelicrs, with whom and for whom they work.
Without entering far on this tangled sub ject, we shall notice, under CO-OPERATION, one or two of the recent suggestions for modifying the relations between employers and artisans.