The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1927. WASTING GOOD MATERIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 182, 22 October 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1927. WASTING GOOD MATERIAL

A LITTLE time ago tlie Premier of Queensland expressed the opinion that, “to see lads with intelligent faces doing the ‘donkey work’ of their country is to he conscious of a tragic waste of good material.” Quite so, though such a common misuse of intelligence may be no more tragic than to see men with donkey faculties doing, or attempting to do, the intelligent work of a country. This sort of tragedy, however, does not touch the brilliant service of statesmen and politicians. They are never out of place. But there i.s a great deal more in the Hon. W. McCormack s shrewd observation than a tempting scope for the play of quip and fancy. It reflects a sad defect in the systems of education and industry both in Australia and in New Zealand. Not only is it true that thousands of lads with intelligent faces are compelled to do donkey work, but thousands more of the same fine type of youth have nothing better to look forward to than the meanest kind of unskilled labour, and scarcely enough of it in sight to keep them aud others in continuous employment. Why are there so many young men with intelligent faces looking for so-called donkey work? The answer is to be found easily in the miserable work of parliaments and politicians, whose apprenticeship to the exalted profession of politics need not exclusively be a test of intelligence at all, but merely an exercise of a glib tongue. I’or the past twenty years in this country, as also in Australia, representative political effort has been directed more on a rapid advance of higher education and a generous college output of lads with intelligent faces, than to the provision of employment for them commensurate with their intellectual alertness and the huge sum of public money spent on them. Perhaps the politicians will point out in defence of their expensive policy that the higli-intelligence system has at least filled to overflowing all the professions and the innumerable departments of public service with thousands of young men and women who do not require to do the country’s donkey work. It lias been emphasised in Australia (and the emphasis is applicable to this Dominion) that the main cause of tlie disproportionate number of unskilled workers in Australian industry has been the marked tendency of many Labour Governments to decrease the margin between the wages for skilled and unskilled labour. In other days the artisan or mechanic was paid so much better than the unskilled labourer that it was worth while training lads with intelligent faces to become expert and thorough tradesmen. Now, the monetary advantage of being a skilled worker, an efficient handicraftsman, is so meagre that thousands of hoys drift into donkey work for the sake of obtaining high wages in their ’teens. Hence the tragic waste of much good material. Yet the mill of higher education grinds on and turns out every year to a standardised pattern several thousand lads with intelligent faces, but without an assured prospect of a ready opportunity to do intelligent work. It i.s one of the least intelligent systems in the world, and when the neglect of responsible politicians to open out new avenues of highly skilled employment for alert youth brings its day of reckoning, the evil of unemployment falls most heavily on the unskilled worker, while the remedy for it is still more donkey work. And the deplorable waste goes on and on while intelligent politicians talk all day and far into the night about everything or nothing, except the need for providing adequate employment for bright lads.