“Boys in Idleness”

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 68, 13 December 1932, Page 11

“Boys in Idleness”

Sir. —We adult workers who have a •family to keep are not .too prosperous just now, and if Mr. Nimmo and Jits Boys’ Week committee have their heads we will, without a doubt, be in a.foois paradise” and not them. Mr. Nimmo says the employers are quite vyilling to take on boys, "but” —and it is just as well for the adult community, men and women, that he arrives at that "but,” and that there are some regulations in regard to employment. . This employment for boys is quite all right looking at it from one side, but when we have a look at the other side it is different. Mr. Nimmo says, they are mostly workers’ boys who want work, and it must not be forgotten that nearly all those boys have a father, and that father has a job, if it is only on rehet—he is uot working for 5/- or 7/6 per week, the wage which would be offered the boys. Now, Sir, my point is—there are many jqbs, in shops and warehouses, which a boy I'6 or 17 could do just as well as a man; there are hundreds of boys who want jobs, aud there are hundreds of men and women who have jobs and. a family to keep, anil there is not the slightest doubt that if certain people get their way those jobs will eventually be filled by. boys at a wage of 5/- to 7/6, and their father or their mother will be in the big army of unemployed. ... I have boys of my own, and at the present time when the outlook is not too bright, may Heaven save me from losing my job, on which I am getting at the most enough to provide my family of six with bed and meals. Which is it to be When work is so scarce—"boys in idleness” or the boys’ fathers, m a tool s naradise and idleness? —-I am. etc., paranue u FATHERS IN WORK. Wellington, December S.