12 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



was 129,081, showing a balance of $5,177.84 which the farm 

 returns to the State more than the whole amount received. 



The amount paid out for permanent improvements may ap- 

 pear to be large, but the fact already alluded to, that many 

 of these improvements were undertaken for the purpose of 

 furnishing out-door work for so large a number of the boys 

 in the school, v/ill sufficiently explain it. Every farmer knows 

 that it is impossible to employ the labor of from seventy to one 

 hundred and fifty boys throughout the season in the culture of 

 the ordinary farm crops. A few days might occur during the 

 season of weeding or harvesting, wlien, on a very large farm, 

 that number might be furnished with work, but those days 

 would be rare. There is an old adage among the farmers 

 in the western part of England, which is quite applicable here : 

 " one boy is a boy, two boys arc half a boy, and three boys are 

 no boy at all." 



Could the Board have taken ten, fifteen or twenty boys, 

 instead of seventy-five, one hundred and one hundred and fifty, 

 the aggregate amount charged to labor and permanent im- 

 provements would have been far less. The experience of the 

 last five years has proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, 

 that, so far from being worth ten cents a day each to the farm, 

 this very large number has been worth far less than half that 

 amount, and it is not, perhajis, too much to say that it has been 

 an absolute cost, witliout any adequate return. 



The labor of a few boys on tlio farm might be made valuable. 

 The farm could better afford to pay twenty-five cents each per 

 day of six hours for the labor of ten good boys, tlian it could 

 to take a hundred, from the ages of ten to fourteen, for noth- 

 ing, and agree to keep a careful and instructive su})ervision 

 over them. To superintend this hundred, in work on any 

 ordinary farm crops, and taking the season through, at least 

 three good aiul intelligent men would be required at a cost, 

 considerably above the average cost of common farm labor. 

 The time of these three men, for at least six or seven hours of 

 the day, would l)0 nearly wortliless for auy other purpose than 

 merely to superintend the boys. The amount of work whicli 

 they could do themselves, would be but trifling. This would 

 ordinarily be the case, even with so large a number of good 

 boys, all disposed to work and do their duty, if the object were 



