Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 344]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

336 Mr. Miles —I will inquire if the same results were obtained last year, as are obtained this year ? Mr. McAffee—this year's results are not completed. So far as the threshing is done, the result seems to be very similar indeed. One more remark, that is this: I feel a great deal of interest in this question of student labor. We had student labor in our institution when I went there, and I did all I could to encourage it, and I believe that good results, followed, results probably, that may be more apparent years hence than they are now; but, from some cause or other, I understand that our governing power, the Board of Eegents, as they are called, decided not to continue the student labor, so I suppose we will be without student labor in our institution. I suppose that difficult question has been eliminated. Mr. Flagg—What has been your experience with student labor ? Mr. McAffee—I found, very much to my surprise, that, taking the average of student labor, under the rule that I was working under, that the twelve and a half cents an hour that we paid for student labor, I thought was well expended as if I had gone out and hired laborers at that price. I could have hired laborers at a higher price that would have done more work, but I think that the average of the student labor that we had on the farm was worth twelve and a half cents an hour, as the market price of labor ran. I will say, though, that I think it would not have been if it had not been that I had the power of dockage, and I exercised that power carefully. I docked time. I classified the students. I notified them at the beginning of the work that I should exercise the power of dockage if I found, from any cause, either inability to perform the work they were given, inattention to rules and regulations and instructions, and the way the work should be done; or idling, such as conversation without any results, conversing and stopping to converse. If I found any of these that I should classify them and dock them according as my judgment would dictate, during the month; and I classified them into A, B and C classes. A class had full time, B time was docked ten percent., C time was docked twenty per cent. I had occasion to dock one student twenty per cent, and out of fifty-four, I had occasion, during the month, to dock only eleven ten per cent. The next month there was no need of any dockage at all. Everything went on first rate, and I believe there was not one of the students but what acknowledged to me personally that they believed the dockage was just and correct, and they thought it was the proper thing to do, and it did work all right. I had some little doubt about it at first.

i;