LABOUR FOR FARMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22685, 24 March 1937, Page 12

LABOUR FOR FARMS

The Government's scheme to subsidise the wages of youths prepared to learn farm work conveys several admissions, though none of them is openly made. Its establishment admits the need for more recruits to the battalions of farm workers. Otherwise why should public money be spent in obtaining them'? It admits that, with the wages the law requires to be paid, farmers are reluctant or unable to engage wholly inexperienced youths and pay them while teaching them the simplest rudiments of their task. If not, it would surely be sufficient to introduce to the farmer needing help the youth wanting employment and prepared to try life on the land. However, these admissions are not vitally important since denial of the well-known facts would be useless. The terms of the offer must suffer the test of experience before a final verdict can be passed on them. The farmer must first try out an aspirant for one week at his own expense. If he is attracted b,y the subsidy scheme he will perhaps be prepared to gamble on it to that extent. Next he will have the service of a youth for eight weeks, largely at the public expense, during which time he must teach his apprentice to milk and to do general farm work. lie must retain the employee for not less than four months all told, on pain of having to refund the subsidy. He is liable to the same penalty if he does riot succeed in teaching the youth his duties. This could be a hard condition, since even good farmers may not be capable teachers, and even willing youths are not necessarily apt pupils. So far the conditions go, then they stop. Nothing is said about the consequences if a youth tires of country life and leaves his employment, though being successfully trained by a farmer willing to keep him in his service. The scheme seems surrounded with rather doubtful factors, but it may do some good.