INSTRUCTIONS TO FARM CADETS ENLISTED FOR CAMP-SQUAD SERVICE IN NEW YORK STATE

WHAT TO TAKE

NECESSARY ARTICLES

Bed sack 75 × 30 inches (to be stuffed with straw at camp) or cot mattress; enamel-ware plate, cup, saucer, sauce dish, also knife, fork, and spoon; dinner pail or box, two heavy blankets, small pillow, working clothes, sweater, gymnasium shirt, raincoat or old overcoat, heavy shoes, toothbrush, tooth powder, small mirror, towels, extra socks, rubbers or rubber boots, extra underwear, hairbrush, comb, soap, handkerchiefs, pajamas, a good disposition, and a spirit of loyalty to the camp and its aims.

DESIRABLE ARTICLES

Musical instruments, camera, baseball, glove, bat, needles, thread, safety pins, notebook, pencils, writing paper, envelopes, good books, magazines.

The methods of housing the boys differ widely. Ordinarily one thinks of tents as being the most feasible, but the scarcity and high cost of such equipment during the past year prevented the boys from living under canvas. Generally speaking, it would be better to think in terms of something more permanent than tents, as these do not last more than three years, and if the camp idea of harvesting crops by the use of boys is to continue,—and many believe it will,—it is advisable to plan for a permanent and inexpensive type of building. A rough board shack with a good roof is highly desirable in the early spring days and in the late fall.

Many of the cadets in New York State camps were quartered in berry houses (which are really packing and storage houses located in the berry fields), in vacant houses, in schoolhouses, in grange halls, and in buildings located on the fair grounds. Most of these berry houses were two stories high, the first floor being used for the commissary department and the second floor for dormitories. In such cases the berries were packed in temporary shacks adjoining the berry houses. In other cases the boys have used the first floor for a sitting room and built a rough shack back of the berry or storage house for kitchen and dining room.

One of the most significant camping places was that of a two-room schoolhouse, where cots for fifty boys were put into the rooms, and the basement was used as a kitchen. The boys built a table outside and put up a canopy over it for a dining room. They next dammed up a brook which ran back of the schoolhouse and made what they termed a "bathtub," which was capable of holding about six boys at a time. They also put into fine condition the rather disreputable schoolhouse latrines. These boys made the schoolhouse ring at night with their popular school songs; the old piano did its best to bring together the heritages of the East Side and of the Highlands of the Hudson.

There are several ways of making provision for camp equipment. One is to develop, under state, county, or local auspices, a series of permanent camp quarters located in small-fruit, large-fruit, and muck-land districts. This equipment need not be expensive. It will be located very near the source of labor demand and can always be used, whether boy or adult labor is employed. Fruit and produce growers and kindred establishments have in the past provided, more or less, for such an equipment.

Another plan is to use schoolhouses, grange halls, vacant farm buildings, and agricultural-fair equipment. It is unfortunate that so much property ordinarily used for public purposes lies idle for long periods of time. Some may say that the city boy will not leave country property in good shape, but experience so far has shown that the city boys have left things better than they found them.

Still another type already spoken of is tentage, and perhaps the best way to provide such an equipment is to have the state furnish it through the adjutant general's office.

The sanitary aspects of any type of camp are highly important. In Massachusetts the committee of public safety, which established boy camps, required that the sanitary conditions of these camps should be inspected by the board of health, and the committee furnished full directions and a blue print for the building of a sanitary latrine.

Some of the camps burn their garbage in home-made incineration plants.

Ordinary garden hose with a watering-pot sprinkler attachment, or an elevated barrel with a sprayer attached, and filled by the use of a pail and ladder, were shower-bath devices worked out by the boys in various camps.

All the camps devised some method of keeping food cool, ranging from those that had a real city ice chest down to those that cleaned out a spring and set in it a bottomless, covered box.

The job of feeding boys in camp is not a sinecure. Every scheme has been tried, from engaging at a salary of one hundred dollars a month a Pullman dining-car chef down to, or shall it be said up to, a boy cook. The cook problem in a labor camp is as difficult to handle as is the so-called "servant" problem of the city. The average cook knows more about cooking than he does about dietetics. He is very likely to lack adaptability. He is usually untrained for camp cooking and is not particularly open to suggestions. Experience seems to show that the best cook is the one who has done work in a Y.M.C.A. camp or in a Boy Scout camp. Of course, this year there was a great scarcity of the latter class to be found, as they were needed in their own organizations, and therefore many camps were obliged to employ a local woman of the matronly type to cook for the boys; sometimes an experienced camp leader has developed some good cooks among the boys in camp. Perhaps the best results, however, were obtained from boys who before the opening of camps were given from two to four weeks of camp-cooking instruction in the school system from which they came. These boys were ready to use the products of the localities, such as peas, beans, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, and corn, while the professional cook often seemed more familiar with the use of the can opener.

The quantity and variety of food was practically in the hands of the boys themselves, assuming that the cook was a good one. If the allowance of fruit for breakfast, for example, consisted of four prunes or one banana or half an orange, and the group as a whole desired a larger portion, it was perfectly possible for them to secure it by so voting, for it must be remembered that the food expense of the camps was divided pro rata among the boys. Under these conditions, however, it was found that the boys were very economical and frowned upon the few malcontents who wanted to gorge themselves.

The cafeteria style of serving prevailed generally.

Providing amusements in recreation camps is always a problem, but farm cadets require little in the way of entertainment after eight or ten hours of field service. Camp-fire talks on agriculture, corn roasts, toasting marshmallows, giving musical entertainments and minstrel shows, holding mock trials, playing baseball on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, constitute the chief forms of recreation. In every instance the lads have been well received in the local communities. They were popular features at church entertainments, Red Cross benefits, and country sociables. Often the boys, especially in the berry-picking regions, went swimming about 4 P.M., after the crates had been sent by the afternoon express.

In every instance the village church and the county Y.M.C.A. took an active interest in the farm cadets. Many of the boys played musical instruments, and their confidence in themselves was contributory to many supplementary boy choirs. The country pastors evidently made it a point to do what they could for the pleasure of all the boys, and without exception there seemed to be no religious distinctions. In some camps the Catholic priest expressed his fatherly feeling for the lads. In others the Jewish and Catholic boys attended the union village church. In brief, the boys entered into the spirit of the rural life, and both the country folk and the youth of the city were the better for it.

A study of the different camps in operation in various parts of the country seems to indicate that they might be grouped under six heads as follows.

I. Concentration, or training, camps. These are usually located in agriculturally strategic sections of the state, where boys may receive preliminary training in camp life and in farm work under disciplinary and instructional conditions. Of course such a camp can do nothing more than give the boys a training in the elements of farm activities (such as harnessing a horse, running a hand cultivator, using a hoe, driving a team) and serve as a trying-out period for weeding out boys who are unsatisfactory. These camps cannot be considered places which will give a preliminary agricultural education, for that is very different from giving a preliminary idea of farm operations. After these boys have received a course of such training, they are sent out under leadership to work in a section of the state where a group may work for one farmer and live at the camp meanwhile or may work for individual farmers and live with the employer. Obviously it is taken for granted that such a camp is located in a good agricultural section and that its surroundings have something more than fine swimming holes or beautiful scenery. These boys must be trained in an environment and under conditions similar to the farm life in which they are to participate later. It would seem that the agricultural colleges of the country and the secondary schools of agriculture would, generally speaking, offer splendid locations for establishing training camps. Here would be found, or ought to be found, good land. This is not always true, because occasionally an agricultural college has been located irrespective of good land. The technical and dormitory facilities, however, would be available for the boys in training.

II. Farm-working, or labor-distributing, camps. These are concentration camps in a certain sense, but they are located directly in the farm district where the boys, after receiving their preliminary training, are to find work in the community adjoining the camp. Several camps of this order have started out with the idea of giving a preliminary training in agriculture in the camp itself, and have borrowed or bought farming implements and teams and leased land in order to give the training. But in the majority of cases this idea was abandoned, for it was found that these boys could receive all their preliminary training with the farmers, provided the leader of the camp could establish helpful relations between the boy and the employing farmer and could, out of his wisdom and experience, protect the boy in the early stages of the work and guide him in all its stages. In other words, in this type of camp a city man, acting as leader, comes into a community with a group of boys who live at the camp but receive their training with the near-by farmers. A labor-supply camp, composed of able-bodied boys, is a type which adequately meets the need at small expense.

III. Military farm-training camp. This is a type of camp where city boys, under the direction of a school or some organization, go into a farming community and open up new land which otherwise would not have been put under cultivation. These boys stay at the camp during the season. They do not work for the farmers near by, or, at least, not ordinarily,—the intention being to establish a self-supporting and self-maintaining camp for the use of the boys who attend. The land is tilled, the seed planted, and the harvest gathered for the benefit of the boys. Any profits are given to the boys or to the school, and any expenses for conducting the camp, or overhead charges, usually come out of the organization or school represented. It is questionable whether, generally speaking, this type of camp is on a sound economic and agricultural basis. If such a camp could be carried on for a number of years with a strong school or other organization behind it, and plenty of capital, it is very likely that it would succeed. It takes capital to establish good soil conditions and purchase tools, farm machinery, and stock, and to put up buildings. It is a highly desirable type of camp to consider in terms of many years or where a school wishes to give its boys a military and farm experience. But in the food emergency through which the country is now passing, it is doubtful if this type of camp should ever have been started. It is, however, an excellent type to establish as a permanent adjunct to a city school system.

IV. Coöperative camp where the boys share in proceeds. This type of camp is practically like III, and if the farm land is new and the camp leader is untrained in agricultural operations and the boys are unskilled, it is about as likely to be doomed to failure as is the other.

V. The village- or country-school type of camp. This is a camp where the schoolboys, under the leadership of a teacher, go to the outskirts of the village and develop a garden. If the land is good and the teacher knows agriculture and the boys attend to business, they will most certainly receive an excellent practical training useful to them in life. They will have learned how to work in the soil, how to work together for a common purpose, how to stick to a job until it is finished, how to look ahead from the time seed is purchased until the crop is placed in the hands of the customer. All these things are good and they are useful to any boy, but, of course, from the standpoint of increasing the food supply in any large way through the growing of wheat, feed corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, potatoes, and large fruits there is little to be said. The work is to be commended on the basis of its value to the individual boy.

VI. Short-term camp, sometimes called "flying squadron". This type of camp is advisable only in an intensive-farming region where quick service for the harvesting period is needed. The squad itself will serve to keep a balance between the demand for labor and the supply. It is easy to picture a fruit region around and through which are a number of camps. Each one ought to be working to the limit, but, of course, as a matter of fact in one section there would be a greater demand for boys than could be met by the local camp. It is at this time that the flying squadron comes in, when, in response to the SOS call, a group of temporarily idle boys from one camp may be sent to another camp which is short of help.