GOVERNMENT YOUTH CENTRE

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23972, 12 June 1943, Page 2

GOVERNMENT YOUTH CENTRE

ANNUAL REPORT The urgent need for a hostel at which school children, students, and young workers could find reasonable board, is emphasised in the tenth annual report of the Government Youth Centre, Christchurch. It is mentioned that the dangers that beset girls coming from the country are great and that it is difficult to obtain private board with reputable persons. The unnatural stimulus given to secondary industries by war conditions, the report points out, has set a fictitious value on the services of junior workers, and hag induced amongst them a feeling of irresponsibility that is hard to combat. They go for higher wages, no matter what are the prospects of future advancement or security.

“We consider the number of girls taking up commercial work as compared with those entering skilled trades is too large,” the report continues. “With the increased use of machinery, office work is becoming more and more a matter of routine, the number of jobs that make demands on organising ability and intelligence becoming steadily fewer.” It is suggested that, if conditions in some workrooms and factories were pleasanter, girls would often be happier doing industrial rather than clerical work.