TRAINING SUSTENANCE MEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22618, 5 January 1937, Page 8

TRAINING SUSTENANCE MEN

The proposal that men now receiving sustenance should be sent to farms for training, their wages to be subsidised from the Unemployment Fund, is a constructive plan for meeting the shortage of farm labour and rehabilitating men who in idleness are liable to drift into dangerously dependent habits of life. In discussing the matter to-day, Mr. H. O. Meilsop, the Auckland provincial president of the Farmers' Union, mentions the demand for competent men who can be relied upon to see a season through, but it does not follow that trainees taken from the

ranks of those drawing sustenance would become more settled in their eventual jobs eo iong as better pay with shorter hours could be obtained, as is the case at present. But at least one competitive influence would be reduced 'hat of sustenance, which so many men prefer to work on dairy farras. Subsidised training need not be confined to farming. There are other industries which need more skilled men. The State housing scheme about to be launched will increase the demand for tradesmen in all branches of building, and the greater activity there is in this key industry the greater will be the available employment in ail the industries that serve it. Sustenance can be given more than a double value if it is used in training men who are victims of the economic storm in useful occupations. It is true that many men receiving sustenance are ageing and would not make suitable farm trainees, but there are also numbers of young men too ready to accommodate their lives to "paid idleness" who require some form of compulsion into regular habits of industry.