When
Franklin D. Roosevelt became president
he put his friend, Harry Hopkins, in
charge of the Works Projects Administration
(WPA). The purpose of the WPA was to give wages to people currently
unemployed. By 1936 over 3.5 million people were employed on various
WPA programs.
This included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program designed
to tackle the problem of unemployed young men aged between 18 and
25 years old. The CCC camps were set up all over the United States.
The organisation was based on the armed forces with officers in charge
of the men. The pay was $30 dollars a month with $22 dollars of it
being sent home to dependents. The men planted trees, built public
parks, drained swamps to fight malaria, restocked rivers with fish,
worked on flood control projects and a range of other work that helped
to conserve the environment. Between 1933 and 1941 over 3,000,000
men served in the CCC.
CCC recruits about to leave for Missoula.
(1)
Frances Perkins was secretary for labour
in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first cabinet. She wrote about this period
in her book, The Roosevelt I Knew (1946)
In one of my conversations with the President in March 1933, he brought
up the idea that became the Civilian Conservation Corps. Roosevelt
loved trees and hated to see them cut and not replaced. It was natural
for him to wish to put large numbers of the unemployed to repairing
such devastation. His enthusiasm for this project, which was really
all his own, led him to some exaggeration of what could be accomplished.
He saw it big. He thought any man or boy would rejoice to leave the
city and work in the woods.
It was characteristic of him that he conceived the project, boldly
rushed it through, and happily left it to others to worry about the
details. And there were some difficult details. The attitude of the
trade unions had to be considered. They were disturbed about this
program, which they feared would put all workers under a "dollar
a day" regimentation merely because they were unemployed.
(2)
Rexford Tugwell was an assistant secretary
in the Agricultural Department in 1933. He wrote about his experiences
in The Democratic Roosevelt (1957)
During the late spring the Civilian Conservation Corps got underway
with some awkwardness. What had begun as a simple notion that the
experienced foresters would take under their care and direction a
certain number of idle young men turned out in practice to be not
so simple. There were problems of recruiting; who was to be chosen?
There were problems of housing; who was to build the camps? It was
finally decided that all those sent to camps should come from families
on relief. It was also decided, when pacifying the unions had become
something of an issue, that the boys would not build their own camps
but that union labour would do it.
(3)
The journalist, James D. Horan, wrote about the Civilian Conservation
Corps in his book, The Desperate Years (1962)
The Civilian Conservation Corps became the most popular of all the
New Deal agencies. Jobless youths working in the outdoors, teenagers
building roads in the unpenetrated sections of the Far West - the
prospect caught the public imagination. It also impressed business
men. They later showed a preference for hiring a man who had been
in the CCC, and the reasoning was simple: employers felt that anyone
who had been in the CCC would know what a full day's work meant and
how to carry out orders in a disciplined way.
I vividly recall covering the first day of enrollment at army headquarters
in downtown New York when the first applicants arrived. Most of them,
in thin summer clothes with no overcoats, had lined up before dawn.
The first boy accepted was from the lower East Side. He was dancing
a jig to celebrate when reporters told him he would probably be sent
to the West. He stopped jigging and a newsman asked if anything was
wrong. The boy scratched his head and said very seriously, "What
the hell are we going to do about those Indians?"
(4)
Blackie Gold, who joined the CCC in 1937, was interviewed
by Studs Terkel in Hard Times (1970)
I was at CCC's for six months, I came home for fifteen days, looked
around for work, and I couldn't make $30 a month, so I enlisted back
in the CCC's and went to Michigan. I spent another six months there
planting trees and building forests. And came out. But still no money
to be made. So back in the CCC's again. From there I went to Boise,
Idaho, and was attached to the forest rangers. Spent four and a half
hours fighting forest fires.
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