180 
Farming and Agricultural Training in 
II. — BuADWALL (Cheshire) Refoematory School. 
" This school was established in 1855. It will hold 65 boys. The 
average number was 62 in 1884. I do not like to take boys under 11, 
nor except they have had two previous convictions. Boys stay up to 
19 and 20, though discharged on an average at 15 to 16. They all are 
criminal, — the worse they are the better I like them. They come from 
manufacturing towns and sea-ports, and a few from the rural districts. They 
become soldiers, sailors, labourers, and artizans ; and about 80 per cent, tura 
out well. I do not care about teaching trades (as they are costly in masters, 
and boys will not stick to them), except what comes in the actual farm 
work, such as care of stock, milking, ploughing, digging, &c. My idea is 
that with a criminal boy the one thing to teach is an industrious habit, and 
that the penalty for all the crimes of his previous life is a steady monotonous 
grind of wholesome work, food, and play, with as little Bohemianism as 
possible. 
"Farm-labour is given as the simplest industry and as the most wholesome 
employment. Boys are paid according to a scale of marks, dependent upon 
' Work,' ' School,' and ' Good conduct,' by which each lad not only receives a 
reward for his own conduct, but benefits or suflers by the conduct of the 
whole school. If, e.g., the average of marks exceeds a certain standard, the 
scale of pay rises throughout the school, and so on. There are some few boys 
who are almost exclusively employed among the stock. These boys, as a 
rule, do not get any morning school, as they have gone early to the farm ; and 
we are obliged, in consequence, to make their school short and easy. Any 
boy may have a garden plot, as a matter of course, by asking. The smartest 
lads take it for ' button-holes ' worn on Sunday. Some grow mustard and cress, 
&c. After a day's field-work, I suspect the lads have had enough of the soil, 
and the novelty of the possession of a plot soon wears off. Our whole farm is 
116 acres. One field of 23 acres has never been broken up. On an average, I 
should say we have 60 acres under spade-cultivation, and the rest in pas- 
ture — permanent, or down for more or less time. There may be an acre 
of garden land and playground round the school. The rent is 208/. bs., and 
there is an unimportant rate. As the land has been drained and improved, I 
suspect it would fetch 21. 5s. to 21. 10s. in the market even now. At one time 
a tenant-farmer valued it at 3Z. 10s. per acre. I place the payments to boys 
as rewards from the general funds, and do not charge them to the farm, and so 
of the payments to ' labour-master,' who acts as usher and schoolmaster, and 
helps in the general discipline. My bailiff and his wife have 120/. per annum ; 
house, coals, vegetables, &c. My calculation is that the cost of the bailiff and 
labour-master is about what would be paid for labour on a farm of that size, 
l)ut tliat the boys fiud tlic labour, the men the superintendence. There are a 
few pounds paid each year for ' threshing machines ' and the accompanying 
labourers with it, &c. Heavy clay management, under spade-labour, can, 
in my experience of 29 years,' never be quite controlled by a fixed rotation. 
A wet season throws all calculations out. We try for a five-course, oats, 
wheat, green-crop and beans, oats or barley, clover ; manuring heavily 
the green crop, and liming when clover is broken up. Occasionally we put a 
field down for a scries of years, and dig up another if the quality of grass is 
failing. We never think it pays to grow potatoes on heavy land. They can 
bo purchased cheaper. The second crop of clover is dressed, and wo always 
have a heavy growth. With 60 lads we can save hay in any weather, and 
even in the wet years we are never in want of late hay, and have not 
thought of ensilage. The great secret of good farming on our land and under 
our conditions is to keep olf it until it is dry, and never to dig wet soil. 
