242 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
In the third place, the responsibility for framing schemes for dealing 
with their own unemployed juveniles should be thrown upon the local 
education authorities. The Board of Education since Mr. Fisher’s Act 
has had the power to require the authorities to submit schemes providing 
for the progressive development and comprehensive organisation of 
education in their several areas. The scheme procedure is, therefore, 
familiar both to the Board and to the authorities. When the schemes 
have been submitted to, and approved by, the Board, it will become 
the authorities’ duty to carry them out. The change would involve the 
transfer to the Board of Education of the administration of all Exchequer 
grants in aid of juvenile unemployment schemes, subject to such condi- 
tions as the Minister of Labour might think fit to impose. ‘The procedure 
suggested is on all fours with that which is followed in the medical inspec- 
tion and treatment service. The local responsibility for that service is 
cast upon the education authorities : at the centre the Minister of Health 
is responsible, the Board of Education acting as his agents directly in 
contact with the authorities. 
The training of the unemployed juvenile is strictly an educational 
matter. The Ministry of Labour was established for quite other purposes. 
It is responsible for the disbursement of millions of money to individuals, 
and the method of check and counter-check, which in the public interest 
it is bound to adopt, leaves no room for that play of local initiative which 
is a characteristic feature of the relations subsisting between the Board 
of Education and the local education authorities. The problem cannot 
be dealt with properly on the somewhat rigid lines to which the Ministry 
is habituated, for it varies from area to area. The Board of Education’s 
administration, on the other hand, is flexible, and the local authorities are 
accustomed to it. ‘They would be encouraged by the change and would 
be put upon their mettle. But the essential condition of progress in this, 
as in all educational business, is an enlightened public interest. A 
society awake to the degrading influence which enforced idleness is having 
upon this large section of its citizens-to-be could not tolerate a half- 
hearted parsimonious handling of so grave an evil. 
