ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the character of apprenticeship and its role in educating, training and preparing girls for the adult world. The operation of apprenticeship and the relative weight assigned to these two aims within male and female apprenticeship illustrate the divergent attitudes toward education and occupational opportunities for each sex. Other material, such as settlement examinations, could be brought to bear to help to describe more fully the content and purposes of female apprenticeship. Economic opinion which favoured removal of trade restrictions was aggressively opposed to apprenticeship. Adam Smith's classical statement of the position gave theoretical force to views which were already widely held. He argues that apprenticeship restricted entrance to certain employments, by limiting the number of apprentices allowed to each master. Lengthy training, which increased the expense of education, restrained it indirectly. The length of the terms also varied the type of apprenticeship to which a child was indentured.
