HOLIDAY WORK ON FARMS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22470, 4 January 1943, Page 3

HOLIDAY WORK ON FARMS

Valuable Experiment The Christmas vacation of hundreds of schoolboys was being turned to good account, said Mr N. G. Gribble, director of the Auckland Youth Centre, in discussing the enthusiastic response made to the appeal for holiday farm labour. In many schools the pupils had had instilled into them the idea that it was their dyty to use their leisure in wartime to help those who were hard-pressed in doing a great job for the nation. However, the scheme was doing more than this. Many lads after their experience as farm helpers in the last year or two had expressed their determination to make farming their career. If citizens would realise that the scheme was not merely concerned with supplying temporary jobs, but was an industrial and sociological experiment, said Mr Gribble, It was capable of producing far-reaching results. For townbred boys the change in home conditions taught valuable lessons. Of over 200 boys who enrolled in Wellington for farm work, between 50 and GO have been tranferred to the Auckland Province, where the demand for help has been much greater than in other parts of the Dominion. There had been a larger proportion of younger boys making application this year ! than ever before. A special permit had to be secured to engage a boy under 15.