AGRICULTURAL BIAS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 13, 7 September 1931, Page 2

AGRICULTURAL BIAS

. Apy scheme which will successfully absorb a number of boys m farming occupations is to be welcomed at any time. At the piesent it is doubly so. The break down of the previous scheme for the training of boys at Penrose Farm, near Masterton, was referred to this week as a matter of regret. The Unemployment Board now proposes to establish a system of cadet training under which boys may be placed on farms and provided with an allowance from the Unemployment Fund as a kind of bursary, which will represent payment for services rendered to the farmers. On^ paper the scheme looks promising and workable. Whether it can be carried out on a worthy- scale remains to be seen. That will depend partly upon the boys themselves and their parents and partly on the farmers' recention of the scheme.. The advantage to the eountry of acclimatising New Zealand boys to rural life cannot be over-emphasised. To the boys themselves it is an opportunity not to be despised It means a home, a freer and healthier occupation than can be tound m the cities, with a more definite object in life than aimless employment in the "blind alleys" of an urban existence. If parents could only see beyond the clouds at present lowering over the land take the long view, in fact — they might conclude that as the depression first enveloped the primary industries it may also Jift first from them. That conclusion would seem to be justified and if it were widely accepted and agriculture were once agam held to offer a "future" or career, there would be no lack of cadets for the land.