E.C. Tenney shared a plan for the upcoming farming season on this day in 1917. Many men had left to serve in World War I, creating a labor shortage.

Tenney met with Brattleboro’s high school principal, the scout commissioner and a member of the gardening committee, proposing a summer work camp that the Brattleboro Daily Reformer called a “clearing house for farm labor.”

He was looking for young men who wanted summer jobs because they could be put to work on local farms. Tenney knew that the boys would provide good labor while the grateful farmers would provide the revenue to run the boys’ camp.

Image courtesy the Vermont Historical Society.