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The Food of the People. 
scarcely soos tliat this is not a necessary an<l natural result, but 
is due to certain defective arrangements which he has it in his 
power in great measure to amend. Now, as soon as you give a 
tolerable education to the child of an agricultural labourer, his 
aim is to cease to be agricultural ; he turns his attention to 
something which he thinks (not always in wisdom) more attrac- 
tive than working in the fields : to be an errand boy, a deputy 
assistant porter's boy in the shop of the village or town, appears 
to him to open a grand vista of future employment, and his 
father and mother are desirous to give him a chance. So away 
he goes, perhaps to success, perhaps to ruin ; but, at any rate, 
he is lost to agriculture. Is there anything at present in the 
character of our schools in agricultural parishes which is cal- 
culated to counteract this tendency to fly off from field-work ? 
Nothing whatever. But something might be done if landlords 
and farmers were to place themselves in the same sort of relation 
to rural schools that many manufacturers have assumed towards 
town schools. The manufacturers who employ many hands 
have schools of their own connected with their works ; they 
take care not only that the children are educated, but that educa- 
tion is carried on for the elder children and adults after the hours 
of labour. They connect the schools and the works, from first to 
last, in the minds of both parents and children. Good progress 
in the schools is made the passport to employment ; and the 
better the school the greater and more certain is the succession 
of well qualified candidates for employment. A similar system, 
combining education with employment, is successfully carried 
out on the estates of a well-known nobleman in one of the home 
counties. He makes attendance of the boys and lads at school — 
the boys at his day school, the lads at his evening school — a con- 
dition not only of their own employment, but of the employment 
of the fathers on his estate ; and by fines and otherwise he 
punishes all truants. 
It seems perfectly certain that, before many more years have 
passed away, the law will require that every child under a certain 
age throughout the United Kingdom shall receive education during 
a certain minimum number of hours in each year ; and there 
may be a few persons who will unthinkingly exclaim, " If that 
be so, then agriculture is ruined." The ruin of manufactures 
was in like manner predicted when first the Factory Acts con- 
nected compulsory education with factory employment ; but 
manufactures have not perished, nor are they likely to perish : 
nor will agriculture be ruined by similar means. The difficulty 
is greater in the case of agriculture, because the half-time system 
is not so applicable there as it is to manufactories ; but on large 
farms, or where two or three contiguous farms might com- 
