TOWN V. COUNTRY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2155, 2 April 1908, Page 2

TOWN V. COUNTRY.

TOWN BOYS USELESS ON A FARM. CONCILIATION COURT EVIDENCE. Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, April 1. A witness in the Farm Laborers’ dispute yesterday went to some pains to show the uselessness of a townbred boy compared with a country boy at farm work. Ho said a boy from town who had attended a primary school and had been “topped off” at a High School would bo a verygreat loss .to a farmer, while a boy brought up in the country was invaluable. To keep a hoy at school until he was 17 or 18, and then send him to a farm, was simply to ruin him. To illustrate the varying values of hoys, lie instanced the case of one of his own employees, who was “a good boy in every way,” hut one to whom ho woui'.d never dream of paying Od in wages. Another hoy only two years older was receiving 2os a week. “Surely you do not condemn education?” said the chairman. “I think,” replied the witness, “that we are. a little, wrong in our education system. I would like a boy when ho has passed tlie sixth standard, instead of going into town, to lose two years to go into the country, where he will be practically attending a technical school. The town hoy loses any amount of time in the morning, when lie could he nicking lip hints on the farm. If he could be on the farm between 7. and 9 o’clock in the morning, and then at a High School! near at hand, it would he all right.”