The inducements for enlisting offered by the state to boys released from school work were the chevron given by the Military Training Commission, to be awarded after thirty days' satisfactory work; the military-training-equivalent value of the service; and the promise of proper pay and care by the employer. As to credits, so important in the New York system, farm cadets were permitted to take the Regents' examinations though the course lacked a few weeks of completion, the time requirement being waived in their case. Any pupil in the schools of the state who enlisted for military service (this applied to the colleges) or who rendered satisfactory agricultural service was credited with the work of the term without examination, on the certificate of the school that his work up to the time of enlistment was satisfactory.
New York is an agricultural state, with a great variety of kinds of farming and many districts remote from centers of the supply of labor. The agricultural census, to which reference was made in Chapter II, supplied data for determining the districts where and when labor was most needed and where schoolboys could be most useful. For example, in Orleans County, in the Western Zone, the demand varied from 163 laborers needed early in May to 1521 needed in October, an indication that there was really more reason for excusing boys in October than in May for work in peach- and apple-harvesting districts.[11] Conspicuous among the types of New York farms where labor was sought were the great fruit farms, such as the Sodus Fruit Farm, with a house on the shore of Lake Ontario able to accommodate 100 boys, where it was planned to harvest the entire peach and apple crop with schoolboy labor; the vast tracts owned by the canning companies, with thousands of acres of tomatoes, beans, and corn under cultivation; and the farms such as those in the South Lima district, where there was muck farming and where the work included the cultivating, sorting, and packing of onions, lettuce, celery, and spinach. Calls were sometimes made upon the state for as many as 1500 boys to assist in harvesting. It was therefore necessary for the state to work on a large and definitely planned scale.
Naturally the first boys to be placed were those residing in or near farming districts. When, however, the supply of these boys was exhausted, the call came, even from remote districts, for city boys. In these cases the problem of transportation becomes serious, as well as the housing and care of the boy in the new environment, where association with other help is apt to be harmful.
The following description of a New York State camp is offered not only because it has proved to be highly successful but also because it affords an excellent illustration of the "farm-working, or labor-distributing, camp," which is defined in the chapter following.
It was called The Erasmus Hall High School (New York City) Potato Growers' Association, and was organized by F. A. Rexford, a teacher who is much interested in agriculture and in boys.
Working and living in the berry fields. One of twenty-five camps in the Highlands of New York State.
Agriculture on a Western basis brings lessons in organization, coöperation, and economy to Eastern boys. City boys working on a large farm near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.