FINDING WORK FOR BOYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20812, 3 March 1931, Page 8

FINDING WORK FOR BOYS.

A difficult and pressing problem, likely to become more difficult if means are not speedily found to solve it, was brought before the Rotary Club yesterday by the secretary of the Auckland Employers' Association., The facts are well known. Boys due to leave school lind it almost impossible to get apprenticeships in skilled trades, and the avenue to agriculture is not as open as it should be. This means a lowering ofjthe economic efliciency of the Dominion as a whole, besides its infliction of individual hardship in many quarters. The problem is not wholly created by the existing commercial depression; it existed to a somewhat vexing degree before the recent accentuation of the trouble. There ought to be, it can be said with full assurance, plenty of employment awaiting boys as they come to an earning age. This country has practically limitless resources for primary production, and a very considerable opportunity of establishing profitable secondary industries. The fault lies with the organisation of ways and means. There is urgent need to overhaul the Apprentices Act. It was framed with more regard to the maintenance of a high rate of wages for journeymen than with thought of what best could be done for the rising generation and the country at large. A flooding of any occupation with apprentices beyond saturation point—to an extent in excess of all possibility of training them well and of absorbing their energies in useful work—would be wrong; yet jfc is very doubtful whether that point has been always reached in any industry and it is certainly not approached in agriculture. Nor has the experiment of local committees served any appreciably good end in the administration of the Act, and Mr. Wright's suggestion of a departmental officer, with authority to introduce some elasticity as to the number of apprentices to be taken at a particular time in any trade, with the.advisory aid of experts in making his decisions, is 'well worth consideration. These matters may be deemed debatable. Generalisation is fatally easy. Some may contend that the allowance of apprentices according to the stipulations of the Act is ample. But what is happening now in a time of economic stress ought not to decide general policy, although it may furnish useful data. The question of wages, which has been accepted as radically decisive, is not necessarily so: it would be better to look a little at the position from the point of view of the boy and the moral benefit of regular and interesting work for him, instead of thinking only in terms of pay-sheets and costs. The Rotary Club, through the suggested committee of investigation, ought to assist in getting all aspects of this many-sided problem considered afresh.