226 
Farming and Agricultural Training in 
It will thus be seen that the cost of board, lodging, tuition, 
and clothing, does not differ materially per head in the two 
classes of schools, but that the Government pays a larger pro- 
portion of it in the case of the Reformatories. In 1884 the 
average cost for English Reformatory boys was 19Z. 16s. 5c?. 
each, and for Industrial boys 18Z. 6s. %d. ; but whereas the 
Treasury allowance in the former case is generally 6s. per week, 
in the latter it does not exceed 3s. 6f?., and in some cases is 
only 2s. The payments made by counties and boroughs vary 
very much — generally from Is. to 2s. &d. per week — according 
to whether the Inmate belongs to the county in which the 
school is situated, or comes from a " foreign " county. Na- 
turally, also, the local contributions are to some extent regulated 
by the financial position of the school. In any case, however, an 
average sum approaching 20Z. a year must be provided for each 
boy, and only about 5 per cent, of it is contributed by the parents. 
This public expenditure is no doubt necessary in the interests 
of society, in order to avoid greater evils and greater expense in 
the future ; but at first sight it certainly seems an encourage- 
ment to parents of a certain class to allow their children to 
acquire criminal habits. The results of the expenditure from 
the Reformatory point of view are sufficiently encouraging, as 
about 79 per cent, of the boys and 72 per cent, of the girls 
hitherto discharged from Reformatories, and about 81 per cent, of 
both sexes discharged from Industrial Schools, are known to have 
done well for some years afterwards. It will have been noticed 
that the average age of the boys at Industrial Schools is less 
than that of those committed to Reformatories ; and further, 
that the former are not so ignorant as the latter (except in crimi- 
nal acquirements) at the time of their admission to the school. 
The educational enquiry has brought out an immense pre- 
ponderance of opinion in favour of the combination of agri- 
cultural training with elementary education. In our higher 
grade schools a considerable portion of each day is devoted to 
physical training of some kind ; and in Reformatory and Indus- 
trial Schools the same result is aimed at, and is obtained, by 
devoting the muscular exercise to a technical purpose. Of 
course it does not follow that the book-work in rural elementary 
schools should be restricted to three hours a day, as it is in 
Reformatories ; but I am quite sure that the principle of the 
half-time system, which Mr. Chadwick and others have advo- 
cated for more than a quarter of a century, is the right one, 
and its success with comparatively young children in the 
Industrial Schools described is very striking. By the adoption 
of such a system in rural elementary schools, boys and girls 
would learn to use their heads and their hands in combination, 
