MIS-USE OF LEISURE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8200, 28 June 1919, Page 1

MIS-USE OF LEISURE.

AND ITS EFFECT ON INDUSTRY. The Board of Trade, in its report on the coal industry, in dealing with the question of output, says: An appreciable degree of voluntary absence is a feature associated with coal mining in all countries. It is a tradition or custom deeply rooted in the peculiar nature of occupation, where men work deep underground for wages at a rate high enough to allow of a tolerable standard of comfort without incessant labor. It is, in our opinion, a result of the strain and disagreeableness of the work itself, and the opportunity for a certain amount of leisure offered by the comparatively high wages. Hotels, gambling, and races are not so much the causes of absenteeism as conditions favoring the easy operation of the real causes, and influencing a certain section of the mining population to spend their leisure in certain ways rather than in others. The mis-use of leisure is as great amongst the general population as amongst miners as a body if we take account of differences in environment, and the opportunities of losing leisure. In a few mining fields, where alternate methods of spending leisure are few, the. prohibition of alcoholic liquors or horse-racing would probably lead to a slightly higher percentage of possible time being worked; hut the average miner is convinced that he works sufficiently long and sufficiently hard, having due regard to his health and efficiency. Any considerable improvement in the annual output per man must he looked for as the result of better training of the worker, better organisation of labor within and without the mines, and a more intensive application of capital in the shape of machinery, etc., rather than from an extension of the number of shifts worked per year by the miner.