There  is  no  need  therefore  to  get  people  even  to
understand  that  these  establishments  could  be  self-
supporting.  They  could  be  at  first  for  those  boys
who  could  pay  something,  and  meet  a  demand  as  a


14  LECTURE    I

matter  of  business.  We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that,
once  established,  they  would  increase  and  multiply
very  rapidly  indeed.  They  have  been  extending
in  France  and  Switzerland,  under  the  name  of  fermes-
ecoles,  we  also  shall  have  to  take  them  up  now.
In  ordinary  times  the  one  difficulty  would  be  that,
in  starting  an  organisation  of  this  kind,  we  should  have
all  the  boys  coming  on  one  dead  level  of  inexperience,
and  that  would  render  it  much  more  difficult  to  make
them  self-supporting.  But  now  we  have  the  disabled
men  of  all  kinds  of  trades,  including  agriculture,
who  would  find  their  best  employment  directing  the
labour  of  the  boys,  the  difficulties  are  removed,  so  we
can  and  must  start.
