DAY OF SPECIALISTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3841, 2 December 1936, Page 5

DAY OF SPECIALISTS

WIDESPREAD TENDENCY. OCCUPATIONAL REGISTER’S STORY. (Special to Courier.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. The various occupational designations given by men when enrolling under the State Placement Service are of considerable interest as evidence of the specialisation that has resulted in many major industries because of modern inventions and the demands of the public, as well as in some occupations previously known under a comprehensive generic name. For the purpose of ascertaining the main and subsidiary occupations of all men who enrol, it is the duty of each of the 23 placement officers to forward to the head office in Wellington every week a detailed list containing such information. These lists are amalgamated, and complete copies are then despatched to each officer, so that he may note where he can, if the need arises, obtain for an employer the services of workers not represented on his own list. This regular interchange of essential information has materially contributed to the great success of the service. Thousands of tradesmen who during the depression were compelled to accept less satisfactory methods of earning.a livelihood have cause to be thankful for the thoroughness of this inquiry .system, because it has been the means whereby they have re-, gained their positions as skilled artisans and are thus enabled to realise ambitions that for several years have appeared to be hopeless of achievement. DIVISIONS OF TRADES. The occupational register of men enrolled contains a list of 550 trades and callings, many of them the outcome of the motor age, tne universal adoption of electricity in practically all industries and for household purposes, the introduction of new methods in large-scale building construction, and the necessity for specialists on the staffs of the big department stores. A blacksmith is no longer just a brawny individual wielding his hammer beneath a spreading tree or in a forge starred with sparks from the anvil. Romance departed from his calling when his apprentices, fullgrown, became farrier, riveter, and general, shoe, and strike smiths. No longer do the children going home from school stand open-eyed at the smithy door. The bootmaker of our boyhood days, who sometimes presented us with a piece of beeswax as a stiffener for a whin-lash, has now expanded to seven dimensions, each jealous of his craftsmanship as boxer, cleaner, clicker, cutter, finisher, heeler, and pressman. Carpenters retain their old-time designations of general, bush-camp, bridge, and carpenter-joiner, and the guild of cooks has admitted only chefs to membership. Half a century or more ago a clerk was a clerkly multum in parvo; toaay he is represented by sixteen offshoots, chiefly specialists in work concerning bank, costing, credits and collections, customs, despatch, insurance, legal, invoice, local body, mail order, merchants and general, public service, records, stock, transport, and tally duties. DAIRY FACTORY STAFFS. A dairy factory worker of forty years ago would be amazed on a visit to an up-to-date factory to-day by finding that whereas “ manager ” and “ factory hands ” covered the designations of all the employee's, they have now extended to seven, for, in addidition to the manager, there are experts on the subjects of dried milk, casein, cheese, cream-grading, and butter. The guild of drivers has multiplied till it now numbers fourteen, and one is pleased to note that because of its alphabetical precedence the letter B has enabled the bullock-driver, one of New Zealand’s national characters, to top the list. More prosaic are drivers of cranes, diesel engines, dredges, steam and electric loco-motors, lorries, motors, motor-vans, mechanical navvies, stationary engines, tractors, motor-rollers, and graders. Thirteen varieties of the engineering profession are listed, their designations being aeronautical, civil, electrical, dredge, general mechanical, heating, locomotive, marjne, mining, motor, power, radio, and refrigerating.

HINT TO WOULD-BE FARMERS. The farmers who have enrolled are representative of only eight of the classes that are believed by many city folk to live a life of constant indolence while Nature benevolently superintends the production of vast wealth from flocks and herds and bounteous harvests. An agriculturist heads the list, and the others are bee, dairy, fruit, mixed, poultry, sheep, and tobacco. Those who may be debating as to the best variey of farming to take up will note from the above list that no cattle farmer has had occasion to enrol for employment. The fitters’ classes number ten, their varieties comprising electric, engineers, gas, general, locomotive, motor, milking-machine, pipe, range, and turner. OVER 400 GARDENERS. Gardeners appear to be in over-sup-ply, the five classes enrolled—general, jobbing, landscape, market, and nurseryman—aggregating 440. Workers in glass have four designations—beveller, blower, glazier, and worker—and twenty of these unusual craftsmen are open for suitable engagement. THIRTY-TWO CLASSES. The most numerously represented class in the register is that for labourers. The total is thirty-two, and they are assistants in bakehouses, to blicklayers, at brickworks, to builders, carpenters, contractors, on dredges, to engineers, to electricians, to fitters, at meat works, to painters, plasterers, to rock-drillers, to plumbers, to stonemasons, in timber yards, and in wool

stores. On farms they assist as ploughmen, as cowmen-gardeners, in agricultural work, as dairy hands, as packers, graders, fruit-pickers, harvesters, mill-hands, leading hands, with sheep. with poultry, with the cultivation ot tobacco, and with any general work. The enrolments number 10,578. Twelve classes of mechanics are on the list, comprising cash register, cycle, diesel engine, electrical, general, linotype, milking machine, motor, motor-cycle, sewing machine, typewriter, and telephone. The motor experts registered total 229. SALESMEN A BIG CLASS. This occupation has twenty different classes listed, and they cover advertising, boots, clothing, confectionery, drapery, fur, furniture, general, grocery, hardware, insurance, live stock, machinery, medical and dental, motors, paints, produce and seeds, radios, soft goods, and stocks and bonds. Naturally, the “ general ” class is largest, 373 enrolments having been made. SEVENTEEN CLASSES. A very wide range is covered by the seventeen classes of registered. The enrolments from the grocery trade easily head the total of those awaiting engagement, their number being 353, while the drapery representatives total 148. The other classes are those who have dealt in books, music, etc., boots and shoes, confectionery, fancy goods, fruit and vegetables, furniture, electrical goods, hardware, ironmongery, leather goods, motor accessories, plumbers’ supplies, seeds, sports goods, and soft goods. The final occupation on the list that has many classes is that of storeman, there being twelve different branches. The general division has 548 enrolments, the next highest being the packers, with 164. The other designations consist of storemen in electrical establishments, in flourmills, in grain and seed stores, in grocery, hardware, medical, painters and printers’ stores, in warehouses, and in wine and spirit and wool and grain stores.