Reformatory and Industrial Schools. 
197 
afforded valuable industrial training. The out-door occupations upon the 
farm have not only been found conducive to the health and strength of those 
so employed, but the ordinary processes of husbandry, the care of stock, and 
the cultivation of garden ground, cannot fail to have a beneficial influence 
upon their general intelligence and usefulness. 
" It will be observed that only small profit is derived from the various 
industries followed; but the Committee have always endeavoured to act 
upon the principle enforced in the Report lately issued by the Commission 
on Reformatory and Industrial Schools, viz., that such industries should be 
encouraged as are most likely to be useful in after life ; and that the profits 
of the inmates' labour should be a secondary consideration. 
" As some remarks have been made during the past year in public, by a 
high authority, at the expense of the North-Eastern Reformatory, as being 
a purely Agricultiu-al School, and therefore of little value as a Training 
Institution for boys who have to earn their living in after years by their 
labour, it may be interesting to show the average disposal of the inmates on a 
working day : — 
Employed 
in bricklaying and masons' work 
brick-making 
.. 5 
.. 13 
carijentering 
.. 8 
Jl 
shoemaking .. 
7 
tailoring 
.. 12 
as blacksmiths 
. 10 
» 
about the house 
. 10 
on the farm 
. 85 
9f 
on hire ., 
. 30 
" It is foimd in practice that boys, on leaving the school, do not, as a rule, 
continue to follow the trade or occupation to which they have been trained. 
This is partly due to the fact that they necessarily obtain their discharge 
before they have had time to become thorough proficients in any handicraft ; 
and partly to the fact that the wages for unskilled labour, where only intel- 
ligence and habits of industry are required, olfer an inducement to them to 
abandon a trade of which they cannot at once obtain the full rewards. But 
even in such cases the Committee are convinced that the training has not 
been thrown away, but, on the contrary, has been most valuable, and is a 
system to be maintained and developed." 
"There are no agricultural employments beyond ordinary farm-work, 
except brick and tile-making. A good deal of draining has from time to 
time been done by the inmates, using our own tiles. The mass of the boys 
are of course employed in digging, &c., but certain of them plough, harrow, 
go with cart and horse, feed cattle, help with the milk cows, assist as 
threshers, cutters, &c., under the general superintendence of experienced farm 
servants. 
" I have not the means of comparing the educational results obtained at 
a Reformatory with those obtained at ordinary Board Schools, not having at 
present any control over or access to Board Schools ; nor do I well see how 
such results can be accurately compared, while the system of inspection and 
the status of the teachers is so different in the two cases contrasted. But 
from my past experience in National and Industrial Schools I have come to 
the conclusion that elementary education in Reformatories netd not sufier, 
if it ever does, by combination with practical work. That is to say, from 
elementary instruction in Reformatories, where practical work is combined 
with school teaching, as good results should be expected as from ordinary 
' lementary schools, ceteris paribus ; and for these reasons: — the time, in our 
Reformatory, and 1 presume in others also, which is given to religious and 
