Boy Life and Labour 195 



With regard to farm labourers, we learn 

 from a report issued by the Board of 

 Agriculture that many of these men assert, 

 apart from reading, writing, and arith- 

 metic, that the education they received at 

 school had proved to be of no possible use to 

 them. 1 



From evidence such as that above given it 

 appears, that a large percentage of the youths 

 of this country are at present living under social 

 and industrial conditions which render them 

 incapable ; when they have reached the age of 

 manhood of earning sufficient to support a 

 wife and family in a clean and comfortable 

 home. 



A certain class of politicians, some fifty years 

 ago were intent on persuading people that if 

 the nation would supply the necessary funds to 

 build school-rooms, and provide the teachers 

 necessary to give free education to every one of 

 the children of our labouring classes, poverty 

 and crime would disappear from the country; 

 they went so far as to assert that, under a system 

 of compulsory free education, if any man re- 



1 The National Review, August, 1910, p. 937. 



N 2 



