Four years ago a boy in Massachusetts faced what would have seemed even to an adult a hard problem. Born in Italy, but thoroughly inoculated with American ideas of the necessity of education, James was told by his father while in the 8th grade that he could no longer be kept in school. His future path was to lie toward the near-by factory.
Believing, because of his garden-club experience under the auspices of the local leader of the United States Department of Agriculture, that he could earn as much by potato raising outside of school hours as he could in a factory by devoting his whole time, he finally obtained permission from his father to try it. So successful was he that summer that his father was willing that he should enter the 9th grade in the fall.
The next spring the superintendent let him have land to use for a large garden. To ten boys he had selected from the upper grammar grades he made the proposition to pay so much an hour and to give each a garden plot. The following excellent advice he offered to them in addition: “If you are going to quit, quit now while it is cool and not when it is hot next August.”
By fall he had decided that enough could be earned in the summer to enable him to attend high school and the agricultural college later. Now a junior in high school, he has a good-size hot-house under lease, where he raises cabbages, cauliflower, and tomato plants; he owns an auto truck to handle his produce, and he has a bank account and pays his bills by check.
With all the school and business cares, he still has time to look after the school welfare of his younger brothers and sisters, visiting their teachers and watching their progress.
A factory hand, probably only a mediocre one, has been lost, but a good food producer has been gained through the vision given James by his experience in raising a garden. If you are in a factory this example will give you hope.
PLAN No. 726. A BOY’S BIG PROFIT ON ONE PIG
From Blackwell, Texas, comes the report of the worth-while achievement of a 15-year-old boy, Kenneth Campbell. This little live-wire pig-raiser sent his pig to the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show. It turned out to be the grand champion barrow of the whole exhibit. It won $105 in prizes and sold for $115. The initial cost of this prize-winner was $5 and $34.60 was spent for feed; leaving a net profit of $180.40.
It is a fine thing to teach your boy to-day, while you are with him, how to support himself in an independent way. Would your boy know how to do something himself, if you were gone? A knowledge of how to make his way is worth more to him than your money when you are gone.