CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 228, 20 January 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

WHERE ARE THE BOYS? Quite a lot of manufacturers are worried because they cannot get sufficient boy labor. Most employers regard the apparent disinclination of hoys to fill gaps with resentment. Southern manufacturers and Auckland manufacturers, too, want boys badly, and one of the complaints is that boys prefer clerical work to work in factories. This is not evidence against the boys. If all the available boys can obtain clerical positions, /it is proof that the need for clerks is growing. Firms do not employ boy clerks in a spirit of philanthropy. Every business mau knows it is extremely difficult in New Zealand to obtain boys for occupations that do not advance them in life. Boy*, for instance, cannot he expected to love the thought of pasting labels on jam-tins all their lives ot tending a machine which performs one little task for fifty years. In our opinion, the determination of parents not to allow boys to fill temporary gaps is a worthy one. If a boy's ultimate destiny is engineering, why make him put in a year or two sweeping an office, or addressing envelopes, or turning a handle? The basis of the trouble is that production is increasing out of proportion to the increase of population. It is nobody's fault that boys who are fit to be lawyers or doctors, drapers, clerks or farmers, do not rush to obtain employment in factories, but it is somebody's fault that more attention is not paid to the manning—or boying—of industries by oversea supply. The obvious desire of a parent is that his boy shall begin the real work of his life as soon as he leaves school. It is unfair to any boy to allow him to undertake a number of trivial and diverse tasks until he at last fits in somewhere pei-manently. Parents fortunately are not so concerned with the present of the manufacturer as the future of their sons. If the boy supply is inadequate for all .\ew Zealand demands, the obvious way out of the difficulty is to encourage families to come to New Zealand in order that there may be enough boys to go round.

THE INFANTICIDE CLAUSE. The historic insult, "No Irish need apply," is little less bitter than the addition of these biting words in an advertisement. No employer, desiring help and adding to his advertisement "no encumbrance," could be convinced that he would have been regarded as an "encumbrance" in his infancy, if his parents had wanted a job. The chairman of the Scottish Agricultural Commission which has been touring Australia >at;ely said he would be able to return to Britain and to tell the people that wives and families were not considered '■' encumbrances" in Australia. Sir Carlos Martin will, of course, tell tlie people what he wants, but the fact is, Australia is not an employer. Australia wants wives and families more than it wants any tiling else on earth, but the employer is not Australia. In perusing two Sydney papers the other day, we found that in each there were very numerous advertisements calling for station hands and farm servants—"wife to cook, c'tc." Out of a total of fifteen such advertisements seven had the "infanticide clause." That is to say, married people with children were absolutely tabooed by seven employers out of fifteen. Tn one of the other advertisements this astounding concession was made by the owner of half a million acres: "One child not objected to." More than one child might tread down the grass or eat too ravenously into a flock of a hundred thousand sheep, or scream loud enough to disturb the slumber of the squatter in his study at Toorak five hundred miles uway. The chairman of the Scottish Commissioners might vary his advice to the British people thus: "Australia aches for men and women with families, and will .welcome them to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Adelaide. Australia wants only those people who will go 'out back, and the 'out back' squatter ,does not want people 'with encumbrances.'" It is no use any commissioner telling Britain what New Zealand wants, or what Canada wants, or what Australia wants. His business is to dissociate the employer from the country and to tell everybody wnat the landowner wants. It is a very fine idea for this country and its big sister to induce large families to come, if bo.- countries settle the families on the country's land, where they are independent of the "no encumbrance" person, but at present this peculiar animal has some dominancy, and until he is dealt with as the chief "encumbrance" the "infanticide clause" will be a feature in a certain kind of advertisement both in Australia and New Zealand.

CHINA. The march of progress in China we have frequently of late referred to. In a recent after-dinner speech, Dr. G. E. Morrison, who has become eminent as an undisputed authority on the, Chinese Empire, startled his nudieneo liy what he tol'd 4hem of the vigorous life in China, and the immense possibilities of its future. All over the vast Empire, with its huiiurcds of millions of population, conditions are improving, railways are spreading, and river routes are expanding. As a result there has been an unprecedented increase in national wealth. Dr. •Morrison, who, it will be remembered, had a long residence in China, and has had a splendid record as the Pckin correspondent of the London Times, recently made a tour of the Empire. He found that the desert along the borders of Mongolia and Manchuria is being invaded by the plough. Il.n Mongolia, State-aided ininiigratiou is attracting large numbers of settlers, while in Manchuria the agricultural outlook is as hopeful as that of Western Canada. Take one instance only: In the Soya bean trade, a new industry, Manc.luirian farmers are receiving actual payments from Europe to the amount of several millions sterling per annum. The advancing solidarity of the nation is apparent in its improved native press, in the growth of a healthy and progressive public opinSon. and i>n the Mention of the National Assembly. If we turn to the military side the efficiency of the army is steadily advancing, the profession of arms being uonv regarded as an ambitious and honor-

abh' one, while every province of the Empire will, within a short period, he able to rely upon a body of ellicient, foreigndrilled troops. Dr. Morrison protests against the use of the phnue, "the awakening of China," as it conveys the impression tnat the conditions of civilisation in China 19 inferior to that of England: while the fact is, he allirms, that it is England which slumbers and snores while preparations to "give us our lesson," as our enemies put it, are proceeding with appalling rapidity almost at our doors.