A NEW U T URE FOR PUBLIC-SCHOOL BOYS.
T"year ended for the public schools with the beginning of what may grow into a very bin. move- ment. The first few days of the Christmas holidays have come to be set apart by schoolmasters for the Head- Masters' Conference, and of the Head-Masters' Conference, as the Warden of Bradfield reminded his hearers, its critics have unkindly remarked that it dines and debates and debates and dines. But this year, at all events, it has done more than discuss the proper place in the school curriculum of French, English, and Greek. The Warden of Bradfield, Dr. Gray, began the proceedings on Decem- ber 22nd by moving a resolution which committed the Conference to further definite support of a new League, the " Public Schools League for Imperial Land Settlement in the Overseas Dominions." Dr. Gray's speech in advocacy of his resolution took full account of Imperial issues, but it was refreshingly practical. What, he asked in effect, was to be the future of Canada as affected by emigration ? Would the Government be controlled by the influence of English settlers ? or if not, by whom ? If the emigration of young educated Englishmen was not having a good effect in Canada, what was there that was wrong ? The Head-Masters' Conference, at all events, in part answer to those questions, in their formally expressed approval of the idea of the Public Schools League, have now definitely recommended the establish- ment of a central office in London for the League's permanent work.
What, then, is the main principle on which the League is to act ? The work which it sets before itself can be best understood, perhaps, by a study of the objects and methods of the Bradfield College Ranch for Bradfield boys, an institution which came into active existence last autumn. In August, when travelling through Canada on his way to preside at the Educational Science Section of the British Association, held at Winnipeg, Dr. Gray bought a house and a ranch of nineteen hundred and twenty acres near Calgary, in the province of Alberta. This is now named the Bradfield. College Ranch, and it is intended to fill a long-recognised want. It would be difficult to guess the numbers of boys who have left English public schools every year for many years past with the desire to enter on some career in the Colonies, particularly Canada, with her vast opportunities for agriculture. The numbers have been very large, and would have been even larger if there had not always existed the difficulty of not knowing where to go, what to do, and whom to trust while learning the beginnings of the work of farming, surveying, engineering, or whatever career might be chosen. So great has that difficulty been felt to be that many of the young men who would have made the best settlers have been deterred from going abroad altogether. On the other hand, there have been plenty of wastrels who have either gone out or been sent out to Canada because they have done no good at home. They have done no good in Canada either, and the result has been that the immigration of educated young Englishmen into Canada, instead of being a success, has for the most part been a failure. As " remittance men" many of them are regarded with contempt ; others, who under better conditions would readily enter into and benefit the life of the community, have found themselves looked upon coldly or suspiciously ; others, again, who possibly have paid fairly large premiums for being taught their work, have found themselves treated little better than menials, and have returned home dis- gusted with a life which was in reality admirably suited for them. Meanwhile the rush of American colonists to take advantage of opportunities which they thoroughly understand has continued, and the North-West of Canada has given farmers of the United States chances of fortunes which might easily have been open for English schoolboys, had they known what to do and where to go. Here is the opportunity of the ranch. The Bradfield Ranch is a " business proposition." It is intended to pay its own way, and to help its pupils to pay theirs. Roughly speaking, the course contemplated is this. A party of Bradfield boys would go out about Eastertide,—that is, about the time when active work on the ranch would begin. They would remain on the ranch until October in each successive year, and in October they would be advised to attend a winter session at one of the Canadian Agricultural Colleges,—say Guelph near Toronto or Mac- donald near Montreal, or possibly an Agricultural College to be affiliated to the University of Edmonton, the capital of Alberta. In the spring the young men would return to the ranch work again, and by the end of two years a ranch pupil ought to be in a position to invest capital in the purchase of land for himself, should he wish to do so, and to invest his money knowing what he was buying. He would thus avoid one of the great pitfalls of the inexperienced immigrant, and would be saved from buying land without a knowledge of soils, or through the middleman, who is often not the most honest of dealers. As to expense, the ranch pupil would pay a premium of £100, there would be the cost of his passage and journey to Alberta (say £25), and there might be in addition the fees and boarding expenses of the two winter sessions at College (possibly £40 for each session). But as regards the £100 premium, the pupil would not only be boarded free of charge during his stay on the ranch, but he would also be paid as wages a minimum of ten dollars (£2) a month on entry, these wages to be raised if his abilities entitled him to better pay. As to the management of the ranch, it is at present under the guidance of a successful Albertan farmer appointed by Dr. Gray, and he, with his wife, is to look after the boarding and general welfare of the pupils. The idea as regards the life of all on the ranch is that it should be strenuous, simple, and hard, but that it should be free from the indignities and the dirtiness which are frequently and unnecessarily associated with the work of a farm-pupil. All the pupils are to be teetotalers, and are to be subject to certain disciplinary restrictions as to leave of absence from the ranch, and so on ; but instead of the " shacks" of the ranchmen of twenty years ago, the Bradfield Ranch pupils will find waiting a house of twenty-six rooms, with " all modern appliances," including a pianola. The ranch carries at present " a small instalment " of stock : eighty horses, ninety cows, two hundred and forty Angora goats, and five hundred sheep, and besides this stock there are pigs, poultry, and bees. Would an ordinary healthy boy with a taste for adventure and a love of farm-work ask for a more alluring prospect ? But the Bradfield College Ranch, which may perhaps be regarded as an example for other ranches of the kind, is meant to be part of a larger scheme. The Head-Masters' Conference for the last three years has been gradually evolving a system of local Advisory Committees in the chief towns of Canada to help public-school boys to get the work and the opportunities they need. The Conference has now approved the idea of the establishment in London of a central office, presumably with a, secretary, for the League, and doubtless the governing bodies of the various schools will decide to support the League with contribu- tions from the funds at their disposal. The Rhodes Trustees, we notice, have already awarded an annual grant of £50. The whole scheme is one which will have the good wishes of all who are anxious that so magnificent a country as Canada, and particularly, perhaps, the almost undeveloped North-West, should be linked with English sentiment and bound up with the fortunes of Englishmen. Canadians hitherto, as our correspondence columns have sometimes shown, have not always seen the best of Englishmen, and the Public Schools League, if it carries out its objects, should have a great future before it in arranging the conditions under which Canadians and British emigrants of the educated classes should meet each other in the life of the new country. That is an Imperial work which should meet with a great reward, and if it has the advantage of also offering an opportunity to British parents for settling the future of their sons, so much the more is it to be recommended. Apart from all material considerations, it will add, we hope, one more tie of senti- ment to the relations of She Mother-country with the Dominions oversea ; a tie which begins with the farmer's knowledge of the soil he works, and ends in the settler's love for the land of his adoption.
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