78 LAND SETTLEMENT & EDUCATION 



the value of book work. Indeed, no greater boon 

 can be conferred upon the working people than a 

 real love of reading, but I am afraid we must confess 

 that this is a boon which our system of text-book 

 work has certainly failed to confer. 



I have no time to deal with this big subject of 

 manual training at length, and must confine my- 

 self to two points. One is that special attention 

 should be given to instructing girls in home craft. 

 If we are to have a happy and contented race of 

 country people the women must understand and 

 take pleasure in the pursuits entailed by life in 

 the country. There is a story of a great advocate 

 of small holdings who was asked what seemed in 

 his opinion the most important factor making for 

 success — the land or the small holder — and who 

 answered, " Neither : the small holder's wife." 

 We want to turn out women who are practical and 

 able to assist their husbands in building up their 

 homesteads in a literal sense, should the need arise, 

 as it would arise if they emigrated and became 

 settlers in our Dominions. 



We must face the fact tha+ in the past the educa- 

 tion of the mass of Englisn women has not been 

 sufficiently practical, and that they have been 

 helpless when confronted with difficulties which 

 women of other nationalities proved themselves 

 quite capable of tackling. In our attempts to 

 remedy this we have made a great mistake. We 

 have given special instruction in a sporadic way ; 

 we have taught the young women about to colonise 

 how to milk cows and perhaps how to make butter, 

 but we have taught them nothing about the cows 

 themselves or how to feed them. But it is the prac- 

 tical foundation work that matters : the frills can 



