IDLE BOYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20628, 29 July 1930, Page 12

IDLE BOYS.

Sir, —J. havo read ".Anxious Parent's" comments ro idle boys with much interest, and fully agree with his sensible estimate of the position. If parents and business people would wake up to tho effects of this hypocritical policy of preventing our boys from 'earning honest trades, they would move heaven and earth to wipe the contemptible enactment out of existence. Restriction of apprenticing. though backed L>y Labour, is the strong weapon of the. party which considers itself best served by restricting local secondary industry. Some twelve months back, on asking if any register of lads awaiting jobs was kept by the department, I was informed that an attempt wr.s mado at one timo to do so, but that tho numbers increased to such proportions that tho idea was abandoned! This in a country of only a million and a-half souls boasting of its huge exports per capita, and yet importing" four millions a year over'and above what it exports! If our average New Zealand wage was as high as £4 per week, four millions a year would suffice to provide 20,000 with employment, and we whine because we have only about, a-tenth of that number who cannot find work. What is the matter, fathers and brothers, arc wo afraid of our children? Surely tho Churches have some interest in the future of cur lads. Yet we never hear any comment from the pulpit respecting this rotten heresy. As the guardians of fuir moral and spiritual characters has (ha Church no duty in this respect? Is there no bishop, no priest, no pastor, who can envisage tho ultimate fate of thousands of these lads, who, degraded by enforced idleness to serve the paltry ends of a few trade union leaders, have no other recourse than to follow paths tlia! 'oo often lead to degradation and crime ? Wake- up. you churchmen' You hourly bewail the indifference of manhood to holy things, but you forpet that your Master cared for the multitude's creature wants before offering them the Kingdom of Heaven. Demos.