JUVENILE EMPLOYMENT
Tice Juvenile Labour Market. By John and Sylvia Jewkes. (Gollancz, 4s. 6d.) OF this book's two sections one is a detailed survey, based on individual case work, of conditions in five representative Lancashire towns between Easter, 1934, and the middle of 1936 ; the other applies the information thus acquired to a general discussion of national policy. The results, in both sections, are depressing. Wages are low, not merely in the reasonably justifiable cases where the young worker is appren- ticed to a skilled trade, but everywhere. Hours, in spite of protective legislation, are often shockingly long ; there are many unprotected trades and elsewhere evasion is frequent owing to. inadequate inspection provisions. Worst . of all, perhaps, is the wastage of the blind-alley job ; a really heart- rending chapter gives a succession of case records showing potential master-craftsmen, keen scholars, steady and intelligent lads and girls, drifting into errand-boy jobs or unskilled charing at 5s. a week or so. Nor are these mere false starts quickly remedied. Turnover is high, but change is too often due to " dismissal from a blind-alley job, or to the aimless
drifting of the child from one job to_another quite unrelated, or to the effort to -escape from intolerable working conditions."
The authors are pessimistic about the new Education Act. The " beneficial employment " clause will, they too con- vincingly argue, make hay of its whole intention. More hope attaches to the Juvenile Instruction Centres (to form, one gladly notices, the subject of another book), and to the develop- ment of the functions of the Juvenile Employment Officer. They expect little improvement in the position of juvenile workers from the already apparent 'decline in their numbers. It is arguable that they are over-pessimistic ; this survey covers precisely those.-years in which the number of- school- leavers, reflecting the high birth-rate the 192o, was highest. Casual observation suggests that in the prosperous South; at all events, juvenile wages have risen noticeably as this peak has been passed. The juvenile Labour Market is an admirable piece of work ; but it calls aloud for several supplements.
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