

96 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



been provided with an absolute minimum 

 of " education," or none at all. 



It is indeed in many cases quite impossible 

 to inspire in village parents any genuine 

 appreciation of the benefits of education. 

 Here once more we see the low wages of our 

 labourers operating as a cause of social 

 mischief. Their life-struggle is so keen and 

 incessant that the inducement to secure an 

 additional shilling from child employment is 

 terribly strong. The poorer folk have not 

 yet followed the example of the well-to-do in 

 the matter of family limitation, and every new 

 baby represents a prospective drain on the 

 home resources for thirteen years. The practi- 

 cal value of a good education, visible enough in 

 the crowded competition of the city, is far less 

 evident to the eyes of rural parents who are 

 often barely able to read and write themselves. 



Here and there you find poor folk who dimly 

 realize how the absence of " book-learning " 

 has handicapped their own career and robbed 

 them of any real chances of betterment. I 

 have often heard old men and women describe 

 pathetically enough their total lack of " school- 

 ing," and how even the love-letters of rustic 

 youths and maidens were written from 

 clumsy dictation at one end and deciphered at 

 the other by the parson or schoolmaster 1 



