EXCESS LEISURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22325, 27 July 1934, Page 13

EXCESS LEISURE

PROBLEM OF THE WORLD UNEMPLOYED YOUTH NEW CONDITIONS OF LIFE. • The problem of the excess leisure that men had to-day as a result of their replacement in industry by machinery was discussed by the Rev. Herbert Leggate, a Toe H padre from England, in an address to the Auckland Rotary Club a few days ago. “ Men who are now unemployed have been educated not for leisure, but for work, and have no capacity for using their leisure,” he said. The world to-day was one in which men had a great power over things, and in the present age no one could tell what new powers would be released, he said. Men were, however, unprepared for the business of living in this strange new world. Hundreds of men were employed in destroying products because the world was filled to bursting with the things men needed. Huge quantities of oranges had been thrown overboard in the Atlantic to keep up the price of the remainder, while sick children in Liverpool were sorely in need of such fruit. Similarly, coffee, wheat, and fish had been destroyed, and in the United States farmers had been paid not to cultivate their land. In Lancashire there were cotton mills that would never be used for their original purpose again.' “ There is not' enough _ work for the world,” Mr Leggate continued. It had been estimated that at present there was only sufficient to keep men busy for five hours a day at five days a week. There was a now atmosphere of optimism in Britain, but with it was a realisation of an unemployed population of some 2,000,000 men. _ Well over 100,000 young people in Britain had never done a day’s work in their lives. He had found from personal experience that many such young men had lost their appetite even for physical exercise, and apparently had no interests or ambition. _ In most countries the system of education had not yet caught up with the new world. New Zealand had a breathing space, however, the country not yet being fully developed. The machine'age would be a deadly time if the creative spirit was allowed to die, and the speaker appealed to all who could do so to work for and -with the young folk leaving school, so that they could have a desire to live full lives and put their time and ability to the best advantage.