Work Camp Restores Dam For New Hampshire Town

Nine people out of ten would probably scoff at the thought of being asked to work all summer long and yet pay for their expenses. Nevertheless, that is what a number of students did during their vacation, and they would be willing to defend their sanity at the drop of a hat.

At a New Hampshire work camp, five Harvard students and 18 other college undergraduates constructed a stone and concrete dam which will provide the town of Grafton Center, New Hampshire, with a 68 acre pond.

Sponsored by Phillips Brooks House and American Defense, Harvard Group, the work camp was coeducational. The 10 girls and 13 boys came from various colleges throughout the country; Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley, Barnard, Chicago, Michigan, Dartmouth, and Pennsylvania were among those represented. Harvard students were Albert England, Richard England '42, David L. D. Hall '45, Richard F. Hart '43, and Lewis Vorhaus, II '44.

Both sexes worked on the dam itself, and the girls scorned dishwashing and floor-scrubbing as much as the boys. However, they all took shifts and spent at least part of their time doing the disagreeable tasks.

Dam Had Predecessor

In the floods of 1927, the original dam was washed away, and it has been unrepaired for 14 years. A large artificial pond, which provided bathing and boating facilities as well as farm irrigation, disappeared with the dam.

The town of Grafton Center was naturally pleased with PBH's offer to establish a work camp there, for the restoration of the dam and pond would mean increased real estate and perhaps industrial, business there, on a small scale at least. The town fathers there fore appropriated $1200 to pay for the cost of material. The remaining costs of the project, totalling a little less than $1000, were taken care of by PBH! American Defense, Harvard Group, and the participating students themselves.

The dam itself is nine feet high and 35 feet long. The major portion is constructed of stone, but a concrete facing gives the dam a smooth surface. When the students left the project at the end of the summer, the concrete facing was not quite finished, but is being completed by local workmen.

Dally Schedule

The working day began at 5:30, when the campers were rudely awakened. Breakfast came at 6 o'clock, and work lasted from 7 to 11 in the morning. Lunch came before noontime, and the students were back at work again at 12:30, staying on the job until 4 in the afternoon.

During their leisure time the campers engaged in an educational program under the direction of Alan Gottlieb '41, who was president of the Student Union and later of the Liberal Union during hie undergraduate career. The program included talks by farmers and industrialists from nearby towns, visits to local factories, etc. On the side the members of the camp played baseball with the town team, and even found time to put on two vaudeville shows and three plays for the benefit of the townspeople. Relations between the work camp and the town of Grafton were ideal and left nothing to be desired.

Patterned After William James Camp

Last summer's work camp was a continuation of an idea which was formulated several years ago by a number of Harvard and Dartmouth students. These men opened the William James Camp in Sharon, Vermont, which was designed to supplement and perhaps displace the C. C. C. program. The camp hoped to carry into practise the ideas of William James, who said that modern civilization needed to provide young men with a "moral equivalent for war."

The William James camp was on a full-time basis, and the workers were doing farm work from dawn to dusk. Last summers camp in New Hampshire required considerably less work, but it was felt that more insure time devoted to educational studies would be more profitable to the campers. Nevertheless, many of the boys helped nearby farmers with their haying as well as worked on the dam itself.

The whole project was so successful this year that plans are being considered for continuing it again next summer. A public bathing beach could be made, and there is a large amount of brush around and in the pond which needs to be cleared