The Times publishes and supports a very insidious proposal The
Times publishes and supports a very insidious proposal for depriving the children agricultural labourers of educa- tion. of tion. It is stated that labourers suffer greatly by the loss of their children's wages consequent on attendance at school, and that children themselves are not able to learn farm-work so thoroughly, to their great loss in after-life. It is proposed, therefore, by Mr. C. Tebbutt, of St. Ives, Huntingdonshire, that no child under thirteen shall be employed in remonerativ9, labour, unless it can produce a cettificate of attendance at school after one o'clock for at least five days a week; the com- pulsory minimum of attendance to be two and a half hours. The effect of that proposal would be that the child would be engaged iu agricultural labour from six am, to noon, six hours, and would then be set down to learn its lessons, utterly wearied out, and incapable of attention from bodily fatigue. Mr. Tebbutt himself says, as a recommendation of his scheme, that the children will do much more than half a day's work. The experience even of the grown lads at Cornell University is that severe labour and steady attention to books are incom- patible, and hardly any labour is so severe as weeding. Work on alternate days would be far preferable, and would enable the farmer, by keeping two relays, to make work continuous ; but afternoon labour would be preferable to both. This, however, the farmers dislike, because under that system they cannot obtain such long hours. Fortunately, the labourers, though fond of their children's wages, have a strong suspicion that they lower their own.
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