EXPLOITATION

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4762, 22 October 1935, Page 6

EXPLOITATION

JUVENILES SWEATED AND UNDER-PAID. "Unemployment in its incidence is part of the larger fact of exploitation. It is bound up with, and must therefore be considered along with, under-employment, which exists today side by side with excessive hours and harsh conditions. In the same family there are over-worked and out-of-work, comments Archdeacon Hunter, Chairman of the Tyneside council of Social Service. “A friend of mine found on his visits one afternoon a very weary pit-boy of fifteen. He was just home from the mine at 3 p.m., having left home at three in the morning. Similarly, juveniles are being sweated and under-paid in shops and offices. "No one dare complain because labour is plentiful and some employers are cads and other employers are great impersonal machines in which there are many steps between the shareholders, thinking chiefly, if not solely, of cash returns —through directors, managers, foremen down to the men. “Where there is no personal touch between employers and employed, and trade unions are weak, results are often as bad as when the employer is a deliberate exploiter. And then there are insecurity and the fear of unemployment. Many of those who live and work with the constant dread of being ‘stood off’ are more distressed than the unemployed, for it is in some ways better to know the worst than to be always fearing it. "Exploitation operating impersonally and willy-nilly—is too prominent a feature in modern industry for the health of social relationships. Very few of us are good enough to have the power over the lives of others which many men have today.”