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American volunteer recruitment on Vermont farms

Film | Digitized | RG Number: RG-60.1797 | Film ID: 4161

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    American volunteer recruitment on Vermont farms
    Transcript
    Farm work is war work.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    That first summer, they were just a handful
    of boys and girls from high school and college, volunteers,
    pioneers, pioneers in a movement,
    which is now nationwide and government-sponsored.
    But that year, they were only a small group
    of 500 youngsters who gave up their vacations
    to work on farms in Vermont.
    They worked harder than any of them had ever worked before.
    And then when the harvest was in on their way back
    to town and school, they all got together.
    This was the moment.
    By the enterprising spirit with which
    he has served on the American land,
    by the determination with which he has performed
    hard and unaccustomed tasks, by his aid
    to increase production of the nation's crops
    in the first year of the war, Dick Shaw
    has in the summer of 1942, proved himself
    a worthy member of the Volunteer Land Corps.
    Yes, that's me, Dick Shaw.
    I want to tell you my story, so you'll
    see what it's like to go from the city to the farm
    where you're greener than the grass you've cut.
    On one of those slow trains that stop at every woodpile,
    there were a whole bunch of fellows and girls
    on the same train.
    I gathered they were all going to work on farms.
    So other fellas had the same idea, I thought.
    I'd just seen an ad in some small-town newspaper
    and answered it.
    Farming seemed to me the only way
    I could get my lick in and show my brother
    Tom that dropping bombs on Hitler
    wasn't the only thing the Shaw family could do to win the war.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    The farmer was supposed to pick me up.
    That man near the wagon was the only one I saw,
    and he didn't look very inviting, pretty grim
    as a matter of fact.
    Could you be Dick Shaw?
    He asked a big chap that got off the train.
    Now I knew he was my farmer.
    I never felt so alone in all my life.
    I'm Dick Shaw, I said, and he only
    said I thought I'd get a bigger one.
    It wasn't what you'd call a warm reception.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    But I sure got warm heaving those feed bags around.
    They weighed 100 pounds a piece, and he
    expected me to toss them up as if they
    were basketballs or something.
    I got the sneaking suspicion that we'd never be buddies.
    I tried to get a word out of him, but no go.
    I kept telling myself that it didn't make any difference even
    if I was five inches shorter than he had expected me to be.
    I'd show him.
    Oh, I finally got him to talk all right, twice.
    When I said, you've got a nice pig, he thought a while
    and said she's a sow.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    And then I said something about how beautiful the country was.
    I don't know what he said, but it wasn't much.
    At any rate, at that point, I gave up
    trying to make conversation.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    So this was the farm, and this was my first day as a farmer.
    My farmer never got a bit chummier.
    He just expected me to know my way around by instinct,
    I guess because he never bothered to show me,
    and if he did, and I didn't get it right the first time,
    he looked as if he thought I had the IQ of a low-grade idiot.
    Once, he let me try to milk a cow.
    I don't know why, but ever since I was a kid, I wanted to milk.
    Someone had told me it's like playing scales on the piano.
    Old sourpuss never said a word.
    But after that one, I was permanently
    reduced to holding the lantern for him while he
    worked, and was I sore.
    And the manure, oh, it was important,
    and I knew what you did with it.
    But I definitely didn't know there was so much of it,
    and it was such hard work.
    And all the time, I not only had to learn
    how to do all these things I'd never done,
    but I had to buck the boss and keep him
    from throwing me off his place.
    I'm not licked yet.
    I kept telling myself I'll get the hang of it.
    Give me time.
    I've only been at it three days.
    Just give me a chance.
    And old sourpuss was much nicer to the horses and the calves
    than he ever was to me.
    I was so worked up about the whole business.
    I just didn't have any appetite.
    I decided I was going to show them.
    I was going to show them that I could milk, that all I needed
    was a little practice, and I'd be as good as the next guy.
    Dinner didn't taste so good anyway.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    I felt lousy.
    I had to wait till the 6:45 pulled in,
    and that's a long wait when you felt like I did.
    I was honestly hip with this farm idea.
    Some bust I turned out to be.
    Is mother going to have herself a good laugh?
    Helping the war effort, I told her.
    You got fired in less than a week, she'll tell me.
    The station agent was saying something
    about the land corp. The land corp?
    Hold this bag for me.
    I kept thinking, after all, I'm willing and not dumb.
    If you set your mind on it, you can learn anything.
    I knew working on the farm was as
    important to winning the war as working in a factory
    or flying planes.
    And old sourpuss hadn't given me a chance.
    Maybe this was it.
    Maybe here, they'd help me learn how you do things on a farm.
    I heard the old man say he needed someone bad,
    and I kept my fingers crossed, hoping he meant me.
    It was worth trying.
    If it didn't work out, I could still get that train back
    to the city.
    Larry was very nice and friendly even though he didn't know me
    from Adam.
    You go ahead and try, he told me.
    Mr. Perry, he said, just needs someone, ask him.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    And the first thing I heard was that the milking machine
    had broken down.
    I'd never seen a milking machine before in my life.
    The old man didn't have much time for me.
    The cows were waiting.
    I wanted to tell him all the reasons why
    I had to work on a farm.
    Mr. Perry was so busy he wouldn't listen to me.
    The only thing he said was, if you're any good,
    sit down and go to work.
    OK, then I'd show them.
    This time it had to work.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    That first day I practically couldn't look at milk.
    I'd milked three cows alone all by myself, and I couldn't eat.
    I was tired, and I didn't feel yet that I belonged.
    It's like that at first.
    At first, I remembered that I finally knew how to milk,
    that I could do it, and it made me feel good.
    But then I started to worry about Farmer Perry.
    Maybe he'd expect me to do all kinds of things,
    and then in a week, he'd tell me to go home to mother.
    It wasn't only mother but the boys
    on the team who said I was just plain nuts to go.
    And Tom, who always said, the kid's
    getting too big for his britches.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    You have no idea how strange it is
    to grip a plow for the first time, a wonderful feeling it
    gives you.
    You've got to be steady on your feet,
    and you've got to have foresight to see the next burrow ahead
    and try to cut it clean.
    Uncle Perry turned out to be a prince, master
    of his little kingdom on the land he loved.
    He understood boys and knew you couldn't
    learn to run a plow on the sidewalks of the city.
    So he taught us, me and Barbara, how to plow.
    She had a feeling for farm work, picked it up right away.
    I realized it wasn't just me and Barbara
    doing this work for the first time, but hundreds of us
    from towns and cities where you think
    of a farmer as merely the chap who grows the food to eat.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    Yes, hundreds of boys and girls, not just in Vermont
    but in every state of the Union, harvesting for the first time.
    On off days when the fields could be left alone,
    we'd cut wood, and then the logs must be stacked.
    A cord of wood is eight feet long, four feet high,
    and four feet wide.
    Uncle Perry told us, good farmers, he
    said stack it neatly like bricks,
    so the wet and moisture can't get through.
    We tried to show him we were good farmers.
    And then you light a fire with one of the logs
    from one of the trees you felled yourself,
    and somehow it burns differently,
    and the water it heats feels lots better.
    And that card from Jack saying he wanted me to come and play
    golf with him, chasing a ball when there's a war to be won
    and a man's work to do!
    Next year, I thought I'll make Jack come up here with me.
    So instead of answering him, I decided
    to send him some snapshots.
    They weren't very good, and I couldn't make up
    my mind which to send.
    Of course, I took most of them myself.
    We had an awful lot of fun.
    First, me working.
    Well, maybe working isn't quite the name for it,
    and then Barbara.
    She's beautiful, isn't she?
    This was the cow that made history.
    She's the first one I ever milked.
    This is my first boss, and I don't know why I ever
    wasted a film on him.
    This was taken at Thompson's Corners at the barn dance.
    That's me over there in the back.
    This is the time we went to the county fair.
    The fair's over there to the right.
    And then we had some amateur tumbling.
    Some of the boys were real good too.
    This is the 4-H Club Orchestra.
    And this Uncle Perry took of us one Sunday after church.
    By the end of August, the Perry kitchen was home for me,
    and, boy, does farming build up your appetite.
    How different from that first evening.
    How friendly to sit with the Perrys and Barbara
    after a hard day's work, and this land was now mine,
    just as I was part of it.
    Mother wrote that I ought to have
    a couple of weeks off before going back
    to school to rest up, she said.
    She didn't know we'd had a frost the night before
    and that we had to get our corn in the next day
    or lose a summer's work.
    When I got to the store one morning,
    there was a phone call from her.
    She didn't realize that if I left,
    it meant that Uncle Perry and Ma and Barbara
    would have to do the whole job alone
    because every farm needed hands, and neighbors
    had to do their own work.
    They just didn't have time to pitch in and help.
    She didn't know that I felt I couldn't just go off like that
    and leave my corn, which I plowed
    and sowed and waited for someone else to harvest.
    And I'll have a vacation when I go back to school, I told her.
    I haven't got time to take a vacation now.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    The frost hadn't been heavy.
    It just nipped the corn.
    But a couple of more nights with a heavier frost, that
    would be too bad.
    We had to cut our corn by hand.
    The corn cutter was broken, and we couldn't get new parts.
    The steel is going into guns, and there just
    aren't enough replacements for farm machinery.
    The short scythe is hard on your fingers and wrists.
    You've got to cut in a scooped position,
    and you've got an awful crick in your back,
    and it's got to be finished.
    No time to waste, heavier frosts are coming,
    and they could ruin our rich golden corn.
    We worked against time early and late, all of us,
    Uncle Perry and Ma, and Barbara and me.
    Then Barbara fed the corn into the chopper where
    all the leaves and kernels are ground to a wet mash,
    and blown into the silo, stored for cattle
    feed during the winter.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    I was up in the silo where the wet mash settles on you
    like a lukewarm blizzard.
    It gets into your hair, your eyes, and up your nose.
    You can't see, and you can't breathe,
    and it just keeps coming down on you as if it'll never stop.
    It's hard work.
    Yes, it's hard work, some of it, but it's worthwhile.
    It makes you feel good to know you can do your share.
    And of course, it's not all work,
    and it's not the work you remember.
    It's the joy of living on the land.
    - (SINGING) The Son of God goes forth to war,
    a kingly crown to gain.
    His blood-red banner streams afar.
    Who follows in his train?
    Who best can drink his cup of woe, triumphant over pain?
    Who patient bears his cross below, he follows in his train?
    Amen.
    I'll be back there again, back at work
    as one of the thousands of fellows and girls
    who signed up with the Victory Farm Volunteers
    all over the country.
    I'll be back because I know now what America really means.
    No!
    Only the beginning of Uncle Sam's long road to victory.
    He needs the Army, needs the Navy, needs the Marine Corps,
    needs the Air Corps, needs the Tank Corps,
    and he needs the US Crop Corps.
    Join the Victory Farm Volunteers, join now.
    See your school principal, or ask your county agent.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]

    Overview

    Description
    Promotional film for Volunteer Land Corp recruitment which follows the experiences of Dick Shaw, a young adult who learns to work on a Vermont farm as part of his contribution to the war effort. Summertime Barnard resident Dorothy Thompson wrote the story. This is a production of the United States Department of Agriculture and State Land Grant Colleges.
    Duration
    00:23:00
    Date
    Event:  1942
    Production:  1942
    Locale
    Vermont, United States
    Credit
    Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration
    Contributor
    Director: Victor Stoloff
    Producer: Edgar Loew
    Producer: Department of Agriculture
    Producer: State Land-Grant Colleges
    Camera Operator: Josef Braun

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Documentary.
    B&W / Color
    Black & White
    Image Quality
    Good

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    You do not require further permission from the Museum to access this archival media.
    Copyright
    Public Domain
    Conditions on Use
    To the best of the Museum's knowledge, this material is in the public domain. You do not require further permission from the Museum to reproduce or use this material.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection - not accessioned
    Film Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased a copy of this film from the National Archives and Records Administration in February 2016.
    Note
    Story by Dorothy Thompson
    Montage by George Freedland
    Music by Paul Dessau

    https://catalog.archives.gov/id/1690

    For more information, contact the Vermont Historical Society at vhs-info@state.vt.us or 802-479-8509
    Copied From
    16mm FGMS
    Film Source
    United States. National Archives and Records Administration. Motion Picture Reference
    File Number
    Legacy Database File: 6071
    Source Archive Number: 16-P-691
    Record last modified:
    2024-02-21 07:49:02
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn1004808

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