During World War II, local businessmen petitioned the U.S. Army to use prisoners for seasonal work in and around Stewartstown because farms, orchards, and canneries faced extreme labor shortages with men away fighting and women employed in defense industries. While at the Stewartstown Camp, prisoners picked beans, tomatoes, potatoes, and fruit, and they also built a new water tower in Stewartstown. A typical day began at 5:30 a.m. with breakfast and a prisoner count, after which they traveled by school bus or farmers' trucks to fields or orchards and worked all day under guards, usually with one guard overseeing 15-18 prisoners at a work site. At 5 p.m. they returned to camp. The government paid them 70 cents a day, saved the money, and issued it as a check when they returned to Germany. Local residents were forbidden to fraternize with the prisoners, and photographs of the camp or prisoners were not permitted, while soldiers working at the camp visited town on their days off to shop and go to the movie theater.