Land Problems and National Welfare 



education beneficial to agriculture, and doubt- 

 less many farm schools and winter schools will 

 be started ; but while such development is very 

 desirable it is ever necessary to insist upon the 

 fact that the net results are bound to be dis- 

 appointing and unsatisfactory so long as the 

 creating of the rural atmosphere in the country 

 elementary school is neglected. 



Our teachers undoubtedly look upon life in 

 the country with far greater favour than in 

 former years when their influence was all 

 directed towards inducing the brighter boys to 

 go into the towns ; and they are beginning to 

 recognise, at all events in those counties where 

 better wages prevail, that a youth with i6 or i8 

 shillings a week is really better off in the 

 country, from hygienic, moral and physical 

 points of view, than he would be in the town, 

 with, say, 22 shillings per week. Should he be 

 earning even 30 shillings per week in the town, 

 and thus securing a financial advantage, the 

 country life would still maintain its superiority 

 from the other points of view. 



Still, though the attitude of the general body 

 of teachers is good, there are many who say, 

 and rightly, that the rural labourers' children 

 have little chance of bettering themselves in the 

 country ; and these are just the keenly intelli- 

 gent men who would be the best advocates of 

 the principle of " Back to the land," or rather, 



168 



