BOYS ON FARMS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9112, 3 April 1908, Page 2

BOYS ON FARMS.

Per Press Association. Christchurch, April 1. A witness in the farm labourers’ dispute recently went to-some pains to show the uselessness of town-bred hoys, compared with the country boy, at farm work. He said that the boy from the town, who had attended primary school and been “topped off” at a high school, would be a very great loss to a farmer, while a hoy brought up in the country was invaluable. To keep a boy at school until he was seventeen or eighteen and then send him to a farm was simply to ruin him. To illustrate the varying values of hoys, he instanced the case of one of his own employees, who “a good hoy in every way,” hut one to whom he would never dream of paying sixpence in wages. Another boy, only two years older, was receiving 25s a week. “Surelv you do not condemn education?” said the chairman.

“I think,” replied the witness, “that we are a little wrong in onr education system. I would like a hoy, when he has passed the sixth standard, instead of going into town to lose two years, to go into the country, where he will he practically attending a technical school. ”