APPRENTICES' QUESTION

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 141, 16 June 1924, Page 8

APPRENTICES' QUESTION

EXPLANATION OF THE ACT.

The apprenticeship question has received a good deal' of attention during the last few months, and to enlist the sympathy of pa-rents and guardians in tin's important matter, a meeting is to be addressed by the Secretary of Labour (Mr. F. W. Rowley) in the Council Chamber on Thursday. Mr. Rowley has visited the principal towns in the Dominion, and has had meetings with those interested i . the question, and explained to them the provisions of the Act which was passed last session. It is anticipated that there will bo a large attendance at the meeting, as of late the importance of preventing boys from drifting into "blind alley" occupations has been stressed. ' The committee of representatives" of workers, employers ', and the Education Department, which sat last year to consider this matter, in the course of its report to the Minister of Labour, remarked :—"The training of the youths of the Dominion is one of great importance ; the manner in which, after leaving the primary schools, they are allowed to drift where they please—many into unskilled callings—gives rise not only to inadequate labour for the industries but to tlie evils of casual labour, unemployment, discontent, absence of- the civic spirit nnd craftsmanship, with the logical result of general unfitness and crime. This point has been stressed by a number of authorities. For example, in Victoria, Judge Bevin stated some years ago that most of the inmates of the gaols had not been properly educated as boys. They were educated up to the aTe of fourteen years, and then turned out to fend for themselves. Boys who did not leave school until 18 or 19 years seldom mixed with the criminal classes. If the training of youths was continued to that age an enormous number of fie criminal classes wonlrl be eliminated."