The Daily News FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1932. JUVENILE UNEMPLOYMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1932, Page 4

The Daily News

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1932. JUVENILE UNEMPLOYMENT

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The report of the Juvenile Unemployment Committee, will be read with considerable interest throughout the Dominion. Composed by only two people, Messrs. 8. G. Smith, M.P., and A. E. Ansell, M.P., the report bears the stamp of careful inquiry by those who set themselves first to ascertain actual conditions and then to determine what measures of relief are possible within the range of those conditions. The committee has dismissed with little comnjent the fact that the problem exists and the causes which led to it. .The problem is too well known to need justification for any attempts at its solution, and Messrs. Smith and Ansell have applied themselves to the search for a remedy. Any other action on their part would have been more or less futile, though it might have rendered possible a much more ponderous report. The facts that juvenile unemployment does exist, and that its psychological as well as its economic effects may be disastrous if allowed to continue, being admitted, the committee looked around for the industry or industries in which there is a chance of absorbing unemployed youths. After a careful survey it was forced to the conclusion that only the primary industries Offer such a chance, and they only after certain conditions have been fulfilled. One of the attractions of the report is that it does not confine itself to generalities. Speaking broadly, most people will admit that it is to increased land settlement that New Zealand must look for its return to prosperity. It is when that opinion is to be. transformed into practical application that the obstacles present themselves, and the difficulties in regard to absorbing boy labour on the land are by no means the least of those connected with land settlement generally. The Smith-# Ansell report does not ignore or minimise these difficulties. Thev include the reluctance of farmers’ sons to remain on the land when they see their parents obtaining scant return for years of hard work, and for themselves only the outlook of a farm labourer. The reluctance of town-bred youths to take up rural work is even more characteristic, and unless prospects can be altered this attitude, however deplorable, can at least be understood. The committee admits that the task of overcoming this prejudice and of placing boys on the land with a chance of success is one that is beyond the power of any Government to accomplish unaided. The fullest assistance must be given by parents, teachers, individual citizens and organisations which are already interesting themselves in the boy problem with good effects. Assuming an incentive to go upon the land can be offered, and the committee indicates, how this could be done by the utilisation of suitable Crown lands, or possibly the acquisition of private property in special circuitstances, the report suggests a scheme of training which is to combine practical work and sufficient scientific training to make the education complete. Areas to be taken up are to be broken in by youths under expert supervision, the work on the land will ‘be interspersed by periods of

scientific teaching, but the aim is to make the youth who shows he has capacity to become a farmer the owner of the land he has helped to bring into productivity. Apart from this part of the plan the report suggests a wide extension of employment of boys on existing farms. The choice of employer, of locality, the supervision of the boys training and the maintenance Of interest in their welfare is suggested as part of the work which could well be undertaken by local organisations. Unless some such intimate interest is shown . the chances of success are admitted to be very doubtful. The committee sees no short cut to the solution of the problem. To find that solution will be no facile undertaking, but the committee is convinced, after a most exhaustive inquiry, that with perseverance, goodwill arid the right sort of co-operation between farmers, schools, local organisations and the Government, unemployment of boys can be reduced to a manageable problem. The remedy will not be rapid in its effect. It may be that more assistance can be obtained from the secondary industries and the professions than the committee thinks possible. If this can be proved so much the better. It will not detract from the general soundness of the committee’s findings, and if the desire to refute some of them stimulates employment other than that on the land the benefit of the report to the Dominion will be thereby enhanced.