27 NOVEMBER 1926, Page 17

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the current issue

of the Spec articles • are appearing on the problem of the family and how to make farming pay: My case touches both subjects. I am aged fifty, with an income of £420 net. I own my house (of six rooms) bought before the War. This is (almost) my only capital.. My younger boy is at a day school (fees, £36flynarlyy. The elder boy.ltlett the. same school . at seventeen and is now on a farm.' (He did • not care for an indoor life : his forebears, four generations back, were stock- breeders, and farming may be in his blood.) How can I really hopefully send this boy, .say in October next, to a farming college for two or three years to get a diploma, and afterwards set him up as a practical farmer, since so much capital is required in farming, and my means are so limited? Are there not greater chances of his becoming nothing more than an agricultural worker than a farmer on his own account ? The younger boy will also need to be appren- ticed to a trade or to enter a profession, entailing, of course, outlay. If I had had only one boy prospects would have been better ; if three, they would have been black indeed.—I am,