Well before the onset of the industrial era in the later part of the nineteenth century, the system of apprenticeship training that had served the nation so well in earlier times was showing signs of weakness. Even before the appearance of factories, the close interaction between master and apprentice was eroding as apprenticeship became more entrepreneurial and less pedagogical. The responsibility for training apprentices was more frequently being turned over to journeymen, and rather than the one-to-one learning relationship modeled after earlier father-son apprenticeships, the number of apprentices in a single shop could be as high as ten or more.