Training of Boys Out of Employment

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6628, 15 August 1931, Page 10

Training of Boys Out of Employment

SUGGESTION THAT FARMERS’ WIVES MIGHT BOARD THEM The opinion that quite a numbor of farmers’ wives would be willing to board boys who had loft school and could obtain no work, and see that they got sufficient training, was expressed by Mr. W. E. Leadley at a mooting of the Christchurch Citizens’ Unemployment Committee, when there was a discussion as to what could be done with boys after they went out of the primary school. Mr. R. J. Ecroyd moved that a reeommendatiou bo made that youths who had left school be trained for one or two years at tochnical schools in the basic trados at the expense of the State. He said that he moved this on account of the present lack of demand for apprentices. Mr. T. L. Drummond seconded the motion pro forma. He said that young boys were being blighted through the slump. Mr. Leadley said that there wore many boys who would jump at a chance of getting on to farms. He thought the Women’s Branch of the Farmers’ Union might help by appealing to farmers’ wives to take boys, Many women would be willing to do so for patriotic reasons. He Ylid not think they would take advantage of the boys’ position and make slaves of them.

Mr. G. Lawn suggested that it was not so much a case of lack of training as of lack of opportunity afterward. There were thousands of boys, children of farmers, who were getting a firstclass training in farming, ' but who found, when they grew up, that there was no opportunity on the land for thorn.

A fundamental requirement was that the farmers should be enabled to stay on their farms so that their children might remain there also. As regards non-rural occupation, the children were getting their training. It was not a question of training or of readiness to work, but of getting them absorbed into industry. That was why ho supported the development of manufacturing industries in New Zealand. Mr. E. H. Andrews said that there was nothing to prevent any boy from attending trade classes at the Technical College. Mr. Ecroyd’s motion was carried.