ROOM IN THE TRADES

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1926, Page 2

ROOM IN THE TRADES

NO FEAR FOR FUTURE. “CARPENTERS ON TOP.” "There may be one or two skilled trades in New Zealand which are in the doldrums, but there are many in which there are openings for good men,” declared the Minister of Education (the Hon R. A. Wright) when I speaking at the Wellington Technical ’ Collage the other evening. ■‘Efficient tradesmen,” he added, “cannot go wrong in this country.” This remark was made during the progress of a discourse upon the value of technical training as a prelude to entry into a trade. “I am not afraid, therefore,” he went on, “that any future technical colleges will assist in turning out more tradesmen than the Dominion requires. "You will find daily appeals in the newspapers for carpenters, plumbers and bricklayers. Well, I had occasion to engage a carpenter recently, and I had to pay him £7 16s a week. I did not begrudge him that, because if a man does his job he is entitled to be paid for it. But if I had my time over again, I think that instead of becoming apprenticed to the printing trade as I was, I would be a carpenter—and I might have made a better job of it. than I have of the printing. (Laughter.) “In my day trade was at a low ebb. Many were out of work and wages were small. But now the scene has changed, and the carjienter is on top, and practically independent. This applies also to bricklayers, plumbers and some other trades. “1 am afraid that during the war we were in the habit of ‘scamping’ the work, because material was scarce, and laberr was also Bearce, and in conseque: t manufactured articles—l refer not , nly to New Zealand, but to the whole world—were sold to ns in any thing but first-class condition. Thit time has gone, and we have materia.' and everything we need. We now have to get back again, and I believe we arc doing it—now that we can get a good job done and rely upon it.”