Page:The agricultural labourer (Denton).djvu/27

 when earning their food and clothes by labour, should be placed in a situation to obtain fundamental technical—or, if it be better, to call it "practical"—knowledge on the farm; not by indiscriminately one day to do one thing and the next another, merely to meet the convenience of the moment, but by putting them for a sufficient time under the shepherd, or the horse-keeper, or the stock-keeper, or the engineer, or the hedger and ditcher, or the thatcher, that they may learn, as far as such labourers can teach them, the duties of their future calling. The only difference between the present system and that which I would suggest would be, that a youth employed on a farm should be so systematically engaged that he should early learn, by a species of apprenticeship, all that can be practically taught upon it, and that the shepherd, the dairyman, or the engine-man, as the case may be, with whom he should be placed, should receive a bonus for teaching him all he knows. In order to be assured that these teachers deserve their bonuses, the youths should, at certain periods, undergo examination, and, where it be practicable, be made to compete with other youths for prizes. All that would be required in the way of national, district, or outside aid, would be the provision of qualified examiners, and the means of paying the teachers their fees, and the youths their prizes. Already we have throughout the country, in the autumn, matches in ploughing, ditching, and draining, and the interest that the labouring men take in the competitions, may be taken as some proof that, under proper control, competitive trials may be extended to farming youths engaged in various agricultural duties. The payments to the labourers for teaching, and the youths for learning, would each act