FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps was created on April 10, 1933

The Great Depression not only ravaged the American economy, it left millions of otherwise strong, intelligent and willing American workers out of a job. As part of his New Deal program to revitalize the economy and put people back to work, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps on April 10, 1933.

The CCC was one of the most successful reemployment programs ever devised and is still widely regarded to this day. It was mentioned in several Woody Guthrie songs, which probably says a lot.  In a blog for OpenSalon magazine, David Cox gives a remarkable account of the WPA another highly successful work program devised by Roosevelt and his administration. I Include these passages to give you a sense of what a remarkable turnaround the New Deal programs represented to the American people:

Let’s look at Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Hoover was strongly against any direct aid to the poor, fearing that they would become demoralized. The Republican Congress, likewise, was against any national scheme to aid the poor. The United States was the only industrial power with no system of social security. No system of national unemployment. No minimum wage law, no national labor laws of any kind. No aid for the elderly or the disabled. Looking back at that America it is like looking into a gow of almost medieval proportions.

When Roosevelt had been struck down by polio, he searched the world seeking a cure and ended up in Warm Springs, Georgia. Warm Springs is about an hour from Atlanta but it was light years from Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park. He was shocked by the living conditions of the people. The lack of electricity and education for the majority of the people, many barely eking out a living by scratching in the dirt as share croppers. But the people welcomed him; their warmth and compassion for his situation touched him. He was like the Buddha leaving the imperial city to find a world of suffering. The townsfolk called him Mr. Frank until the election; then they called him Mr. President.

Before the New Deal, the elderly were the poorest demographic in the country. When you got too old to work, you lived on your savings, and if you didn’t have savings you starved or lived on charity or with your children. America was mainly rural then with most people living on farms, so those elderly worked until the day they died. Healthcare existed only for the rich and hospitals were a cash affair except for the “charity ward”. If you were sick or injured you went home and you either got better or you died. There was no public health service. Hypothermia was the second leading cause of death for the elderly and pneumonia was the first. In Detroit in 1932 two people an hour died of starvation; in Toledo unemployment was at 70%.

The Americans of that generation, like our own, sought change and hope, and in 1932 the Republicans were completely repudiated. Roosevelt reversed the federal government’s position completely with what was called the alphabet soup of government programs. Of course the most obvious is Social Security for the elderly, but there were many other programs that have faded into history and been forgotten.

As related in Wikipedia, the CCC became one of the more popular New Deal programs among the general public, providing economic relief, rehabilitation and training for a total of 3 million men. The CCC also provided a comprehensive work program that combined conservation, renewal, awareness and appreciation of the nation’s natural resources. The CCC was never considered a permanent program and depended on emergency and temporary legislation for its existence.  On June 30, 1942 Congress voted to eliminate funding for the CCC, formally ceasing active operation of the program.

During the time of the CCC, volunteers planted nearly 3 billion trees to help reforest America, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide that would become the start of most state parks, forest fire fighting methods were developed and a network of thousands of miles of public roadways and buildings were constructed connecting the nation’s public lands.

Fundamentally, the CCC and the New Deal were a blueprint for a bold but effective government program to actively involve itself in improving the heart of our economy: our workers.

A website called CCC Legacy  keeps many of the workers employed by CCC in touch. True to the activist spirit of the CCC program itself, the CCC Legacy organization also includes conservation education programs and camps for youth. Reunions are also planned and attended every year.