The public ledger. [volume] (Maysville, Ky.) 1913-1968, 1918-07-31
BOYS ON FARM
IS NOT A FAD
Il SAY OFFICIALS
Story That viii Convince the Most
Skeptical Of the Work Youngsters
Can DO On the Farms of
the Nation.

The United States Employment Ser
vice doesn't urge the use of boys of
between sixteen and twenty-one for
farm work as fad. 1t does so be-
cause the supply of regular farm la
Dor has been depleted and new
sources of supply must be found and
utilized if war-winning crops are to
be produced and because boys are one
of the best kinds of potential workers.
Farmers rapidly are learning that
after some intensive training the av-
erage husky boy is no poor hand at
farm work. F.. F.. Frizell, state labor
director for Kansas and a prominent
farmer, says that he has found them
much superior to the usual hobo labor
used in the western harvest work.
Certainly, boys are better than no
help at all.
Story for Skeptics
And here is a story for the skeptical
farmer and the armchaid GlD adviser.
Incidentally it tells of what only one
state is doing, for boy training is go
ing on now in the majority of the
states:
The Farm Plattsburg" is Pennsyl-
vania's solution to the problem of TAX
ing the greenness off the ineXperi
enced city high school boy and equip
ping him for real farm work in n
short time. Like other industrial
states, the greater part of Pennsyl-
vania's members of the Boys Working
Reserve are necessarily from large
towns and cities. Since the latter
part of April the Keystone State has
been turning out several hundred in
tensively trained reserve boys and
placing them on farms every fort
night
Camp at State College
The training is given through Penn
sylvania State College, near Belle
fonte. The institution is devoting its
tlllll al equipment anu
ulty to this patriotic service The
boys are selected for training accord
ing to their physical and mental
adaptability. They live under can
vas on the college campus and dress
in uniforms contributed by the Penn
| sylvania National Guards The camp
is under semi-miltary discipline. All
practical instruction is given on a l.
6OO-acre farm, on which actual farm
ing operations are being carried on,
A Y. NJ. c. A. hut has been opened on
/ the campus, and director organizes
the leisure time of the boys-although
there is very little of that.
The graduates of this Farm Platts-
burg" are being taken readily enough
by farmers. Some go directly to the
farmers homes, while others live in
camps, known as Liberty Camps,
sleeping there at night and going to
nearby farms during the day.
$50 Boys Every Two Weeks
Squads of between 800 and 400 boys
are being turned out by the training
camp every two weeks. Approx
mately 1900 boys already have been
trained through the Keystone state
camp.
The boys rise at dawn each day and
are put through setting up exercises.
Then they tackle a strenuous day of
caring for, Harvesting, and driving
horses feeding and milking cows
caring for pigs, chickens, and sheep
handling Of farm machinery of all
kinds, planting, ploughing, using the
sythe, etc, The speed of the boys in
assimilatlng the essentials of farm
ing has been a revelation TO their
teachers and to the farmers, and the
physical change in them ia most
startling, After two weeks OF train