BOY UNEMPLOYMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22326, 28 July 1934, Page 16

BOY UNEMPLOYMENT

IN NORTH OF ENGLAND In the North of England there were more than 100,000 young people between the ages of 14 and 18 with no work, and the number was increasing,” said Mr J. L. Paton, formerly. high master of the Manchester Grammar School, in a Rotary speech. It is estimated that in 1935, unless there was an increase in employment—■rt’hich was a possibility but not a probability—that number would have grown to 118,000, and by the following year to 127,000. “ What does that mean in terms of human flesh and blood?” Mr Paton asked. “It means something much worse than enforced labour; it means enforced idleness, and if you asked me which I would rather any sons of mine should be subjected to I should say, ‘ Give me enforced labour.’ If you are not finding jobs for these boys and girls Satan will find them jobs. Their education goes on, but it is a down-grade education, the education of the street corner—groasnoss, vulgarity, gambling, dirt, roughness—it means a whole generation growing up and coming to man’s estate without having had a chance of doing a useful day’s work —and there is an education that comes of doing a day’s work.” He concluded with a plea that what his hearers tried to do for their children between the ages of 14 and IS should be the standard by which they should measure the national action. If they did not, instead of getting men and women of vigour, faith, resolution, and the will to peace, they would breed the bitterness of Marxism and the sloth, stagnation, and inefficiency that came of unemployment.