A source of great anxiety to the conductors of ragged schools is the disposal of the children after they have been in some degree fitted for active life; and emigration, assisted as this has been to a large extent by the government and by privato benevolence, has opened an eligible outlet for many hundreds of the children. Many encouraging reports have been received respecting the conduct, of the emigrants. Mr. John McGregor, barrister, who has taken a deep interest, in all the efforts for the benefit of ragged school children, visited Canada in the autumn of 1858, and made it his business to institute personal inquiries into the condition of boys who had been sent out as emigrants from metro politan refuges and ragged schools. The result of his inquiries was extremely favourable, many of the boys being found in good situations, and conducting themselves in a creditable manner. The letters from emigrants which are published in the annual reports of the Red Hill Reformatory, the St. Giles's Refuge, and similar institutions, contain much that is interesting and indicative of well-doing on the part of the writers.
An excellent initiatory step in industrial training has been found in connection with the shoe-black brigades. The shoe-black societies were commenced in 1851. For the year 18.59 the statistics of those in London were as follows Besides these societies there is a Roman Catholic brigade, designated as that of St. Vincent de Paul.
The result of the establishment and extension of the ragged school system may be summed up in the terms of a resolution, moved by Sir J. P. Kaye Shuttleworth, at a meeting of the Leeds Ragged School and Shoe-Black Brigade, in October, 1860, with Viscount Palmerston, prime minister of England, in the chair :—" The establishment of ragged schools hag been productive of much good in diminishing crime and ignorance ; and a large extension of this species of benevolence is imperatively demanded in our large and populous towns and cities."