Child Labour and the War
Maoriland Worker, Volume 6, Issue 217, 7 April 1915, Page 7
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Child Labour and the War
BRITISH FARMERS AND CHEAP BOY LABOUR.
The "Christian Commonwealth" says that one result of the wjnr will be to push back the movement for extending the age-limit at which children can lea re school to fifteen or sixteen. At the beginning of these months of horror efforts were made'by the Board of Education to induce.local authorities to keep the children in school for a longer period instead of throwing them at fourteen years of age upon an overstocked labour market. The Labour movement pressed strongly but unsuccessfully for.widely extended maintenance grants to euable this'policy to-be enforced. ... Now a sinister movement in the opposite direction is to be observed. Iγ the agricultural districts there i 9 a shortage of cheap labour. The farmers, seeing their opportunity, have not drawn upon the plentiful la-, ■hour resources of the towns—for such ..labour might be dear—but have turned their attention to, the boys in the ■schools who are cheap., There are fortunes waiting for farmers in these days of scarcity and high prices, and with cheap boy labour the fortunes will be bigger, . . If a child is to be employed in agriculture h<? may be released from school for half the year at so early an
age as eleven years
