Employment for Boys.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20620, 9 August 1932, Page 8

Employment for Boys.

The decision of yesterday's meeting of representatives of social welfare organisations in Christchurck to proceed with the scheme for holding a Youth Employment Campaign in September was wise and courageous. There is no more disquieting aspect of the depression, and none that will be more far-reaching in its economic and moral consequences, than the enforced idleness of those who have just left school. Nor is the problem one that can be solved by the methods normally adopted by the State to relieve unemployment, for to make boys depend on the State for their livelihood is almost os bad as leaving them in idleness. Somehow, if they are to be saved from premature bitterness and disillusion, the community must prevent them from feeling that there is no room for them in the existing economio order. The scheme approved yesterday recognises tkib fact by seeking to find for them places, if only temporary places, in industry and commerce. It is important to realise, however, that the scheme will not have succeeded if it does no more than find employment for five hundred boys for a month. If no other result had been hoped for, the scheme would not have been worthy of the enthusiasm that led to its being adopted. But what the promoters hope, and are justified in hoping, is that the scheme will discover its own strength and reveal to at least some employers the fact that they can profitably enlarge their staffs. It would not, of course, be wise to allow the scheme to overshadow or supplant what is already being done to help unemployed boys in other ways. The decision of the Minister for Education to relax the restrictions governing the admission of boys to the Technical College, announced this morning, should greatly assist and encourage those who are approaching the problem from the educational side. It is also most desirable that the scheme to place boys on the land, which has already been fairly successful, should bo regarded as the necessary complement of any scheme which seeks to find employment for them in towns.