Town and Country

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

Town and Country

f f V N a village typical of other villages over hundreds of square miles T of rural England in that, owing to the lure of the town, the vßlage I school is less than half full, there are six boys who have recently 1 left school, and their situation is so perfect a microcosm of the whole countryside that it is worth while examining it to detail, writes the Agricultural Correspondent of the /Birmingham Post. “The firk, son of a farm bailiff, has gone as an apprentice to relations who run a wood-working business near London docks. Numbers two and three, not very robust twins, are doing what can only be described as odd (but well-paid) work at a nearby aerodrome. i “Family opinion is that, though the pay is good, the work is very bard. (My opinion is that-they are in a blind-alley job, and that, at nineteen, they will have to begin all over again). Number four is a bilker’s errand-boy in the neighbouring village. Number five is houseboy to the local doctor, and number six has not made up his mind what to do, if and when he decides to work. A fond mother will see to it that he is not hurried into any uncongenial occupation! ■ “Agriculture is the sole, industry of this village, yet among the six school-leavers in a given year, not one even considered the land as a possible outlet for his energy. In the case of the boy whose father is a bailiff on a very small-run farm, agriculture was dismissed as an opening with the ictum, ‘There is no future on the land for a boy today.’ “Let Us turn back to the six school-leavers,- and ask what they are getting, what they are likely to get, in comparison with what would normally have been their position if they had stayed on the land. Number one will be a carpenter who will probably get on, but he is far from certain to go faster or further than his father the bailiff, especially in these days of mechanized holdings with minimum labour staffs, the personnel of which must all be efficient, and some of whom must be practical mechanics as well as farm-workers, facts reflected in wages. “The and lorry-washing twins at the aerodrome are unlikely to

be getting even as much as the farm-worker by the time they are 21, even if, long before that, they have not been replaced by other school-leavers. The errand boy is going nowhither, and what becomes of the doctor s houseboy depends not only on the boy but on .the doctor! , ... j-too “Thus, out of the five placed school-leavers, not one is beyond all, doubt better off than he would have been on the land; and three are definitely worse off, with a fourth doubtful. What, then, is the matter, that such a situation should exist? “My own experience is that the first reason is the parents’ conviction that farming is finished. Net it has had, during the last tw.enty years, about the lowest incidence of unemployment of any of our industries; and every countryman knows men in bis own district who began as farm labourers ' and wlio have become substantial farmers. I “How do these facts square with the idea that farming is finished and that there is no future in it for a boy? “Next, we are told that farm yvork is dull; and here, I think, is the clue to a townward urge, that would persist even if all material factois were equal. Farm work is dull to the town mind. I illage life xv ill remain dull, whatever possible amenities are added—to the town min . “It is quite possible that washing lorries is much more fun than ploughing, and answering the doorbell than spreading muck-to the town mind If then, it iU the mind he brings to it that makes farm work seem dull, there can be only One radical cure-a different mind, produced by tional system that assumes it is possible to live in a country environment and that therefore provides a curriculum with a rural rather an an ur background. i “This is not to plead for an educational plan aiming at the creation of farm labourers, but.one that will help boys and girls to live a full, active and intelligent life in the country, getting not less, from it than they would if they lived and worked in a town.”