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.
CHAPTER XII
A SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION
Out of this war we are going to have a new spirit and method in education. England has already begun to evaluate its present system. It has issued a report on the assistance which education, if properly directed, can give to industry and commerce after the war. The results of a recent investigation afford—so the report states—a convincing proof of the necessity of improving and extending the provisions hitherto made for instruction and training in scientific studies as a necessary foundation for fruitful research.