SHALL OUR BOYS LEARN A TRADE ? The Rights of the Rising Generation.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 91, 29 March 1902, Page 8

SHALL OUR BOYS LEARN A TRADE ? The Rights of the Rising Generation.

THE award which the Arbitration Court has ]u&t made in the sa^milling industry is of considerable importance. It enforces the lesson that the rising generation in this colony are not to have tbe \arious trades closed to them in order to make larger room for adult labour. Again and again, in these industrial disputes, has the trade unionist, with a curious disregard for tbe welfare of his own offspring in esse or in posse, demanded the restriction of boy labour, and sought to confine within the narrowest limits the pro portion of youths or apprentices who might be employed at his paiticular trade. * * * A demand of that nature was included among the claims put forth by the sawmill hands. They wanted to absolutely prohibit the employer from setting a youth to work a machine (except as an assistant), no matter how little skill it required, and to require him to pay to each machinist, irrespective of the character of the work and the class of machine, the minimum wage of £3. Had their terms been allowed by the Court the effect would have been— (l) to throw a number of lads out of employment, (2) to \ery much restrict the opportunities for lads to learn the timber trade, or get work at the mills, and (3) to largely increase the cost of production. In other words, the idea was to penalise the public at large in two ways for the special advantage and direct emolument of the adult sawmill operative. • • • But, in this instance, the Court has put its foot very firmly down. Repeating the terms of a judgment it recently gave in Invercargill, the Court declares — " We do not considei that this Couit ought to impose restrictions on the employment of youths in callings in which they have hitherto been employed, and in which they are fully competent to do the necessary work, simply to make place foi adult laboui at a highei wage. A youth has as much right to the opportunity to earn his living as a man, and it is against the best interests of the community to shut the avenues by which he may obtain employment." » ♦ * In affirming this principle the Court has shown its wisdom, and done the community a real service. What effect would the restriction of juvenile or apprentice labour in this or any other industry have? It would narrow the field of employment; for our lads leaving school, and drive them to Australia to learn a trade. And who would feel the pinch of it most severely ? Unquestionably, the fathers of families among these trades unionists themselves. It would be their sons — not the children of the well-to-do — who would have to hi\e off from home, and go among strangers at a premature age, in order to be allowed to learn a trade and earn a living. # ♦ * They would actually expatriate then own children in order to keep up their own wages. What short-sighted folly ! So repugnant is it to com-mon-sense that one is forced to the conviction that it must be the bache-

lois in these trade unions or the younger married men — who seem to think then infants will never "row into youths and maidens — who are responsible toi these pieposteious and utterly seliish demands. What matter it to them? Their motto is to look after number one, and take no thought of the morrow. It is a \evy serious question, howev.r, for the working man who is declining from the heyday of life and has a houseful of growing boys whom he wants to place at .some trade that will enable them in time to provide for themselves. And for his sake and the good of the country we are pleased to note that the Arbitration Court refuses to ignore the rights of the rising generation.