APPENDIX IT 205 



the departure of half a dozen men from the district. A true 

 community would, of course, be affected by the loss of its mem- 

 bers. A co-operative society that loses a dozen members, the 

 milk of their cows, their orders for fertilizers, seeds, and feeding 

 stuffs, receives serious injury to its prosperity. ThatistheditTer- 

 ence between a community and an unorganized population." 



Local Education Authorities must actively develop these 

 things ; they must understand that they are responsible for 

 the standard of the people living within their areas ; they 

 must realize that deep down in every heart exists a love of the 

 land and a desire to work upon the land if conditions are 

 reasonably favourable, and this is not merely for material 

 reasons but for spiritual ones also. 



Rural land means the material object through which certain 

 fundamental spiritual needs of man can find satisfaction. We 

 want to foster and develop that call of the land, not only for 

 the physical and spiritual development of the people, but for 

 the very consolidation of our country and our Empire. 



I have shown how disproportioned is our agricultural 

 population compared with the vast land area of the British 

 Empire ; we must encourage more of those now being 

 educated to go in for a career on the land at home and over- 

 seas. To this end all industrial schools and reformatories 

 should have farms attached to them ; some of these are 

 already turning out excellently trained agriculturists, but the 

 proportion of these should be greater. Again, I think that 

 much more should be done to influence the children under 

 the control of the Poor Law Authorities to go in for a career 

 on the land. In Austria, where the boarding-out system is 

 universal, practically all the Poor Law children become 

 agriculturists. We have here been occupying ourselves with 

 the elementary schools and the children of the worker. But 

 equally I feel that the science instruction in our great public 

 schools and secondary schools stands in need of revision, so 

 that every one who will ever be connected with the land 

 should know about land ; and this, ahus, is very far from being 

 the case at prc»ent. 1 have only been able to throw out certain 



