To every 25 farms there is a superintendent, who visits them daily, and directs and distributes among the colonists the labours of the day; and to every 100 farms a sub-director, who gives instructions to the superintendent, keeps the registers, and manages the manufactures.
In selecting the occupiers of each subdivision of 25 farms, care is taken that persons of different trades shall be included. The superintendence to which a family is subjected diminishes day by day with its good conduct, and ceases almost entirely as soon as the colonist has repaid the value of the advances which have been made to him. Those who are idle or disorderly are taken before a council of superintendence, of which some colonists are members, and may be sent on to a council of discipline, which has the power to transfer them to Ommerschans, a colony for the repression of mendicity; of which we shall speak hereafter. They are detained there for a fixed period, in a place set apart for them, and kept to more than usually hard labour. The industrious and well-disposed colonists are appointed superintendents of the works in the colonies for the repression of mendicity, and in those for the reception of orphans and indigent persons.
Most of the inhabitants of Frederiks-Oord are Protestants; there are, however, several Catholic and two Jewish families.
In the morning of the 3d day we went to Wateren, which is two leagues from Frederiks-Oord. Wateren is the colony of Agricultural Instruction, to which are sent the orphans who most distinguish themselves in their colonies. They amount to 60, and acquire agricultural knowledge from a master, and from the practice of working at a farm of 42 bonniers (nearly 103 acres) in arable, nursery grounds, and pasture. They are instructed by the same master in the Bible, the history of Holland, land surveying, natural-history, botany, mathematics, chemistry, and gymnastics. They are better dressed than the others, and wear a hat with a riband, on which is written the name of the privileged colony to which they belong. Their destination is to become superintendents in the free colonies. The society derives from this colony an annual profit of about 900 flor. or 75_l._