The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

probably not make good on @ real farm.
 As a matter of fact, the school has one boy 5S years old who cannot be driven away. He gets jobs occasionally, but al ways returns. And for ten years he has been sweeping out the stable. All the wages he asks is that the school give him a chance to read each day one of the sensational newspapers. Other boys will contentedly wash dishes or help cook or volunteer for domestic tasks indoors where it is warm. These are not good material, for the real live boy hates ''womans work" Such boys, when re- moved from the paternal features of the school to a real farm, are as helpless as a country boy would be alone without money in New York.
 The routine of inoculation is a combi- nation of farm life city play and plenty of good food, programme in which at least two elements are commonly abso- lute novelties to the anaemic city lad All the boys on arriving at the farm dis card their city clothes, which are fumi- gated, washed and mended, and, after a bath don farmers uniform of overalls and blue jeans coat, flannel shirt, heavy shoes and soft hat.
 They rise early and breakfast at 6 o'clock. Then the older boys troop out to the barns, learn to care for the stock and hitch up, and the milking squad learns the fine art of piloting a stream into pail and straining and cooling the milk in the spring house. A few min utes later and boy from the Bowery Is having his first experience with a blow. His idea of a furrow is suspiciously like crooked Pearl street, and before long he is liable to be swearing fervently at blis- ters on his hands. Other boys clear rocks or work at stumps, or with the aid of a steam crusher repair roads The planting squad gets busy in its territory and probably plants as much seed in one furrow as would do for an acre.
 If the plowman who slowly blows his burning hands swears too openly and with signs of continuance and threats to return homeward to little old New York" he is entered into the anti-swear- ing class conducted by the team of oxen. These oxen understand just two express sions: Gee and Flaw" And the most sulphurous of explosives are wasted. It takes generally just half an hour for the boy to grow wise to the fact that when with the oxen you must talk as oxen do; likewise when with farmers.
 As one boy who was cured put it: Say, did youse ever swear like, well you know what I mean, at a guy for half an hour and then find youse was wasting lang widge on a dummy? Say, youse might just as well try to get Dummy Taylor rattIed from the bleachers. Who's Dum- my Taylor? An, wotyer givin us? Dum- my's der deaf an dumb one wid the Giants.'' After field work comes dinner. And the way those boys eat, so busy "feedin' food ter the face that they can't 'hot air none!"
 Lunch is followed by games in the liv- ing room-checkers, authors, dominoes, for it is a part of a farmers education to know how to while away those long winter evenings. Then more farm work. But at 3 o'clock there is a sudden exo- dus to the ball field, waere probably you will find opposed to each other the star batteries of teams that play good ball, too in spite of the fact that each boy has to keep one eye open for the 'cop. The experience of playing ball without an occasional yell of cheese it'' is also novelty. Incidentally, this ball playing proficiency is a great accomplishment for the boy who is to farm it near a village. He is sure to become pitcher, captain, manager and coach of the Spring Valley Crescents' and a social and political power. One of the boys wrote that he had actually introduced the game in an out of the way place. For ability to play the national game, like the boys stories of life in the great city are very welcome
 
 weeks after the boys arrival the farmer folk will gather to hear his tales of New York The boy is much like six month old newspaper arriving at some far away naval station. He is the wireless means of communication with the great, strange life in New York He has seen the 40- story skyscraper go up from foundation to roof tree, and what boots 1t, if he chances to make 1t some dozen stories higher than 1t is.
 Supper follows the evening care of the stock. and at night there are more quiet games or discussions about the great dime novel country to which they are to be sent But they are ready for bed by s o'clock and soon the rows of white beds in the airy dormitories are filled with boys dreaming of praries.
 It costs the society, or rather those who contribute to it's funds for this work, just s30 to find a real home or good job for a boy Girls also are sent from the city industrial schools but so far none has be- come a political power, though many are wives and mothers in prosperous and in- fiuential western families.
 The older boys at the farm generally show what is in them after four weeks. If they are the right material they are immediately placed in positions whore they will be paid good wages as soon as they really learn farming-for the school does not pretend to turn out finished farmers For those that fail to show a liking or aptitude for farm work, other employment is found If. after a boy is sent out he does not make good" the farmer is under no obligation to keep him. and the society brings him back. This frees the farmer from the danger of having an unsuitable boy on his hands and guarantees the community from any risk of having one of the society's boys become a charge on the poor funds.
 Very few of the 102,0oo people for whom the society has found out-of-town homes, however. have been returned. In all, more than 5000 have thus found perma- nent homes. Of the remaining, many have entered the army or navy, or found independent work of their own. The reason for this. MT. Brace explains, Is that the society never sends out chili until it is convinced that the child is en- tirely suitable. The hundreds of cases in which people have adopted these little "sent outs is, he believes, an indication of the care with which the society ex- pends the ssO given to 1t to use in finding a home