year, every bit of it being done under contract,
and the contracts were all taken by our new settlers. During the
past year about two hundred houses were built, and these were all
contracted to the new settlers.

It is true they have many things to learn, just as we have. We are
not really teaching them, but we are working with them, studying
with them, learning much from them, just as they learn from us. We
are opening up our demonstration farms, studying the problems just
as they are. Our adviser's main work is to assist them in choosing
the kind of seed best adapted to that country, to act as a kind of
leader for the community, for they are all strangers, and until
they have become accustomed to the country, and until leaders
have sprung up among them, it is necessary that an outside leader,
such as our agricultural adviser, should be employed, but not
because of the ignorance or inefficiency of the foreigners.

Observing the actual operations of such advisers in a number of cases,
the writer has been convinced that in every new rural immigrant colony
an intelligent, sympathetic, and efficient adviser is needed, and that
the private colonization companies are to be commended for employing
such advisers.

CHILDREN OVERWORKED

In one of the colonies the writer observed that the settlers' children
worked a great deal. On one farm three children--two boys and one
girl--of ages varying from nine to thirteen or fourteen, were clearing
land of stones and the debris of brush and stumps. On another farm, the
settler's wife, with her two tiny and delicate girls, was cultivating
potatoes, each one using a rake. On a third farm, two boys, one of ten
and the other of twelve, were cutting hay with scythes. The boys were
thin and pale. In talk they appeared serious and somewhat cheerless,
although in a measure enthusiastic about their new farm.

The company's local officials and also the settlers themselves admitted
that their children work considerably, even to the extent that they are
often kept home from school. The settlers said that they understood the
harm being done their children both by working too hard and by being
withdrawn from school. But they are very eager to put their new farms on
a paying basis in the shortest possible time. The company's officials
said that they had so far not interfered with the use of child labor,
but that in the future