Our Schools in War Time—and AfterDean, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis)
History
Our Schools in War Time—and After
Dean, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis)
Education -- United States; World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Schools
Still another type already spoken of is tentage, and perhaps the best
way to provide such an equipment is to have the state furnish it
through the adjutant general's office.
The sanitary aspects of any type of camp are highly important. In
Massachusetts the committee of public safety, which established boy
camps, required that the sanitary conditions of these camps should be
inspected by the board of health, and the committee furnished full
directions and a blue print for the building of a sanitary latrine.
Some of the camps burn their garbage in home-made incineration plants.
Ordinary garden hose with a watering-pot sprinkler attachment, or an
elevated barrel with a sprayer attached, and filled by the use of a
pail and ladder, were shower-bath devices worked out by the boys in
various camps.
All the camps devised some method of keeping food cool, ranging from
those that had a real city ice chest down to those that cleaned out a
spring and set in it a bottomless, covered box.
The job of feeding boys in camp is not a sinecure. Every scheme has
been tried, from engaging at a salary of one hundred dollars a month
a Pullman dining-car chef down to, or shall it be said up to, a boy
cook. The cook problem in a labor camp is as difficult to handle as
is the so-called "servant" problem of the city. The average cook knows
more about cooking than he does about dietetics. He is very likely to
lack adaptability. He is usually untrained for camp cooking and is
not particularly open to suggestions. Experience seems to show that
the best cook is the one who has done work in a Y.M.C.A. camp or in
a Boy Scout camp. Of course, this year there was a great scarcity
of the latter class to be found, as they were needed in their own
organizations, and therefore many camps were obliged to employ a
local woman of the matronly type to cook for the boys; sometimes an
experienced camp leader has developed some good cooks among the boys
in camp. Perhaps the best results, however, were obtained from boys
who before the opening of camps were given from two to four weeks of
camp-cooking instruction in the school system from which they came.
These boys were ready to use the products of the localities, such
as peas, beans, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, and corn, while the
professional cook often seemed more familiar with the use of the can
opener.
The quantity and variety of food was practically in the hands of
the boys themselves, assuming that the cook was a good one. If the
allowance of fruit for breakfast, for example, consisted of four
prunes or one banana or half an orange, and the group as a whole
desired a larger portion, it was perfectly possible for them to secure
it by so voting, for it must be remembered that the food expense of
the camps was divided pro rata among the boys. Under these conditions,
however, it was found that the boys were very economical and frowned
upon the few malcontents who wanted to gorge themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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