Furthermore it is necessary for the government, state or national, to take a hand in the distribution and the sale of farm products. It made me sick at heart, on a trip of inspection to 25 camps, to see hundreds of boys at work picking berries under the hot sun in a service supposedly patriotic, and then to see the same berries, which had been sold by the growers at a price not much above that of other years, resold to the consumer at double the price of other years,—and always with the remark: "You know labor is scarce this year, and the farmers cannot get help." The result of it all has been that the consumer, for whom the work was done, has been disregarded.
From the point of view of social reconstruction, education, food production, and conservation only the surface has been scratched. The state must take the initiative, assuring the consumer a moderate price for the product, and the farmer, the dealer, and the boy a fair return for their service.
The boy is not merely a labor unit in the conservation of food. He is the essential feature of an educational program. The experience of the past summer proves that with centralization, organization, and an educational vision as fundamental sub-divisions of a far-sighted state policy the placing of boy labor on farms could become a valuable and permanent by-product of the war.
CHAPTER XI
THE ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP
In organizing camps for supplying cadet labor it is well to keep in mind that they are to be established on the basis of a business proposition; that they are not primarily play camps or recreational camps; that they are not to be located on a river or lake because there happens to be a good place for boys to swim, if there are not paying jobs near that river or lake on which the boys may work; that they are not to be established at random without reference to the continuity of work during the season, or without any real knowledge of the local demand for labor.
Out of considerable experience during the past year it has been discovered that there are three great elements: first, the boy; second, the farmer; and third, the job. In addition there are the elements of leadership, of housing, and of cooking. Of course there must also be considered the elements of recreation, religious observances, and the general social life of the camp.
With reference to the boy it would seem that he ought to be one of a group which belongs to a public-school system, or to an institution, or to some society or organization which is ready to coöperate in placing him in a farm camp. We are hardly prepared as yet to take individual boys, unassociated with any organization, and bring them together in a camp where the lack of unity will give the leader little hold. A number of boys from New York City were picked up at random and sent out to a distant place up-state under the direction of a leader who had never seen them before. The boys had not met one another until they were put on a train in New York. Not coming from any single school or organization, they felt no particular responsibility to anyone. All they knew about the proposition was that they were to go to a certain place, where they would be met by someone who was to conduct them to a camp. They were undisciplined and later proved to be unmanageable. At the very start the plan lacked that coördinating influence which would have existed if the leader had been a teacher in a school from which these boys had come as one group, or if a Y.M.C.A. boys' secretary had organized a group from his association. Of course, some day a way may be found to bring together a group of boys independent of previous association and place them in a new environment in about the same way that adult labor is gathered up in the streets of New York and shipped by employment agencies to some distant point. But boys are not men. The responsibility of sending a more or less irresponsible youth to a distant point by the same methods that are used by employment agencies in sending men is too great for any state or community to undertake.
It is generally understood that the best boys for farm work are those who are over 16 years of age. This is true, of course, of boys who engage in general farm work, such as plowing, milking, horse cultivating, haying, and harvesting grains and potatoes. Many such boys were placed in the dairying and general-farming regions of New York State. These boys, in most cases, lived with the individual farmer and were paid by the month. But it has been found from experience that the 14-year-old boy is often better adapted to certain types of farm work than is the older boy. For example, the young boy, with his adolescent enthusiasm, his nimbler fingers, and his general physical alertness, is more desirable for picking small fruits, such as strawberries, currants, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and cherries. The 14-year-old boy must, however, work on a different basis from the one who is over 16.
It is necessary for the boys to pass a physical examination, because no state authorities care to assume the responsibility of taking the physically unfit. It is taken for granted that the boy is to fit into the organization of the camp as a business proposition and that he is to stick to his work, pay his share of the cost of the food and its preparation, respond to leadership, and in every way do his part toward promoting the general efficiency of the camp.