Abstract
My intention here is to examine the interaction involved in promoting social cohesion among certain industrial work groups, in terms which social anthropologists might employ in their analysis of various rites of passage, and the culturally transmitted myths and rituals of economically primitive societies. Entry into the printing industry is generally obtained through apprenticeship to an individual employer, "The Master,"1 for a period of up to four years. Most recruits enter when they leave secondary school at sixteen, and complete their period of training within the four or five years before reaching the age of twenty-one. Ostensibly the apprenticeship system is a means of gaining expertise in a craft or trade, but it has always been very much more than this. The system lends itself to intensive indoctrination. Folklore, myth and time-hallowed custom all play their part. Even the apprentice's Certificate of Indenture expresses a medieval inheritance:
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