Reformatory and Industrial Schools. 
235 
schools in our rural districts. Therefore I have not gone into 
minute calculations and deductions, on account of some of the 
boys being employed at some of the schools more or less in 
house-work and in mending clothes. Nor have I thought it 
necessary to endeavour to estimate the relative amounts of work 
done by boys and men respectively. The elements of the 
question are given, and they appear to supply the fundamental 
data for the solution of some very interesting problems. 
With regard to the most profitable means of utilising the 
boys' labour, having due regard to the situation and circum- 
stances of each school, I would suggest to some of the managers 
the desirability of devoting more land to the cultivation of 
industrial (including medicinal) and market-garden crops — the 
latter where climate, soil, and proximity to a market are 
favourable, and the former where those conditions are absent. 
As an example of my meaning, I may say that I have not 
observed a piece of flax on the farm attached to any school. 
No doubt the growth of industrial crops, and especially their 
preparation for market, would necessitate care and attention on 
the part of the labour-master in directing the older boys ; but 
that simply means additional education of a technical, and 
therefore of a most valuable, character. 
The great difficulty which most of the managers find is the 
disinclination of English farmers to board lads in farm-houses 
— certain districts in England and Wales excepted ; — but if it 
were more generally known that excellent workers, well in- 
structed in the means of cultivating the land, and in tending 
the animals of the farm, could be obtained from these schools, 
I think that farmers would endeavour to make arrangements 
with their married labourers to board and lodge such boys, and 
that we should then hear from them much less than at present 
about the impossibility of obtaining " a fair day's work for 
a fair day's pay." Some of these schools already have a steady 
demand for boys from farmers in the Colonies and in some 
particular districts of England ; and in the case of the East 
Barnet Farm Home it curiously happens that the demand comes 
from a limited region in South Wales, because, as I am informed, 
it has been found that the boys can teach the Welsh farmers' 
children the English language ! 
I have frequently been asked, in the course of conversation 
upon the technical education of the agricultural labourer, " If 
your scheme were adopted, where would you find teachers com- 
petent to carry it out ? " My reply has been — " Create the 
demand, and the supply will follow." Now I submit that the 
replies to my questions, which are given in the preceding pages, 
are sufficient to prove that the working heads of the Reforma- 
tory and Industrial Schools are a body of highly intelligent 
