Reckless Gambling: Manpower Wastage

Northern Advocate, 17 November 1941, Page 2

Reckless Gambling: Manpower Wastage

* STRATFORD, This Day. Men “wasted in training racehorses’’ and in working in a “wantonly expanded Civil Service,” who could be better employed in essential industry connected with the Dominion’s war effort, were the subject of stringent comment by Mr. W. J. Poison. M.P. (Stratford), at the opening of the Stratford Show on Saturday. “Farming is the essential industry upon which our future development hinges.” he said, “but we are faced with the possibility of paralysis of all industry and with destruction and enslavement such as first befell the Foies and then other nations in Europe. One would Imagine sucn a possibility would arouse the country to a concentration of effort that would fit every unit of human labour into Us essential niche. “Comb Unessential Occupations” “One would suppose that, before telling farmers to carry on and in some instances compelling them to carry on whether they have labour or even health to do so, our authorities would comb over some unessen • 'rial occupations which cater often to pleasure and sometimes to selfishness and would have transferred their labour power to industries which are essential. “To ask women to do more than they are already doing or to enrol

schoolchildren while grown men unrestrictedly devote time to such things ‘ as horse training and racing, and to employment in a wantonly extended civil service,” said Mr. Poison, “is to show a disregard for dangers that lie ahead, and a failure to lead the country in internal organisation of war effort in a time of national peril that is a reckless gambling with fate. “I say these things with regret, because they need saying, and because the necessity for action grows daily greater. We are calling up mayried men next and soon the shortage of manpower must gravely affect essential production on farms. Boys, we were told on the radio on Thursday, are to have instilled into them their responsibilities as war workers on farms. What about instilling a sense of responsibility into the army of those in unessential occupations first? Why give the hard jobs to the women j and the children?”