The farmer's agreement is with the state and not with the boy, as the scheme works on the basis that the young men have been engaged by the state for farm service and as employees of the state receive their pay through the regular state channels.
On the first of July more than 450 boys had been trained and sent out to various points in the state.
The following letter from the director-general of the camp gives in a word his experience with these boys:
We feel that this movement can be justified from any one of a half-dozen standpoints. We are taking city boys and in a few weeks giving them a few carefully selected fundamental principles relating to practical farm activities, which has enabled them to go out to the farms under our leaders and give satisfaction. We have not had a single complete failure yet. Only 3 boys out of 600 employed for the season have been changed because they could not fill the requirements. The way these city boys have taken hold of farm work has been wonderfully gratifying. In connection with this training, we are conducting our camp along lines similar to camps of National Guardsmen. The whole organization is nearly identical with the regular army camps. While the training is not so extensive, the boys are given the fundamentals in correct form. The spirit and general training at the camp will be of great value if any of these boys are ever called into the service.
Another important possibility, and from my experience with city boys, a probability, is that some of these boys will become sufficiently interested in agriculture to choose it as a vocation, while others will choose it later in life as an avocation, because of this experience.
Another mobilization camp of the "labor-distribution" type, with some training features, was that of the Long Island Food Reserve Battalion. This organization was initiated by the Nassau County Y.M.C.A. and supported financially and morally by the Long Island Railroad, the state agricultural school at Farmingdale, and by local residents. A detailed description is unnecessary. There were 6 camps under this organization scattered over the island, in each camp 48 boys under a supervisor, a military instructor, and squad leaders (1 squad leader to approximately every 7 boys). The last camp was developed at the state school of agriculture with a group of 96 boys working in two shifts, one beginning at 6 A.M. and stopping at 12 noon; the other beginning at 12 noon and stopping at 6 P.M. A regular course of agricultural instruction was carried on at all the camps. Lectures have been given in entomology, farm chemistry, and marketing. During the first month of the first camp it was difficult to place the boys. The idea was not well received by the farmers, who claimed that the presence of boys would "demoralize" their regular help, and that the boys would not recognize the different vegetables and would hoe out corn as quickly as they would pigweed. (One boy in a New York State camp did carefully hoe out and pull up every corn plant for a half-day, leaving weeds.)
During the height of the season these same farmers were driving to the camps and offering from $2 to $2.50 a day for the same boys that they had laughed at hiring for $1.25 a day at the beginning of the installation of the camps.
The "flying-squadron" idea is unique. An auto truck, with a trailer for tentage and supplies, is always ready to respond with its load of boys to an emergency call to save some particular crop. The group composing this squadron is made up of "hand-picked" boys who are qualifying for squad-leader positions.
An example of a camp which was conducted in such a manner that the boys lost the minimum of school work is that of the Bushwick (Brooklyn, New York), High School "Camp Squire" near Hicksville, Long Island. The organization of this camp is interesting, not so much because it was established with the purpose of making it self-supporting, but rather because it provided definite opportunities for continuing with school studies. The initial amount of about $175 was subscribed by teachers, and the tent and mess house, intended formerly for harvesters, was lent by the farmer on whose grounds the camp was placed. The leader of this camp, a teacher in the same school from which the boys were recruited, planned, after the schools opened in September, a day of work and study, coaching the boys in their school subjects, so that with at least three hours of study per day the boys were enabled to keep up with their classes while at work harvesting until the middle of October. In this, as in other successful camps, the boys formed a unit organization before going to camp, and had the advantage of a sympathetic instructor of academic and agricultural experience to enforce voluntary school discipline. The boys were paid 20 to 25 cents an hour, working for neighboring farmers from 7 A.M. to 3 P.M. The rest of the day was divided into silent study, consultation, and recreation hours. It is expected that this camp, which will doubtless be permanent, will become self-supporting in its second or third year and the initial outlay will be returned.
The farm-camp idea is here to stay. Of that we are sure. The purely recreational camp is a thing of the past. The days of the purely work camp of ten to twelve hours a day ought to be over. Work, play, and study in the future will be brought together in the summer time as effectively as during the so-called "regular" season. Next year, and in the years after, we shall organize this work around some educational ideal and not merely around a necessity for food-production. The two are by no means incompatible.
This year we have learned "how not to do it," as one camp leader put it. In some instances the boys went home with less money than they had at the start. In brief they paid the farmer for the privilege of picking berries. Particularly in berry picking there was much piece work, and such may carry with it nearly all the evils that it does in the factory. Mr. Keller, a thoughtful leader of a New York camp, says in this connection: "Judging the fair wage from the earnings of the expert is manifestly unfair. It means that the average boy must be speeded up beyond his point of endurance, or that he must receive less than a living wage. The possibilities of speeding up are limited, and so the alternative is longer hours."