Civilian Conservation Corps Quotes

was ready to be moved. While Roosevelt backed the draft, Eleanor continued to argue for a wider form of national service available to both men and women through an expanded National Youth Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. “To tie it up with military training alone,” she wrote in her column in midsummer, “[is to miss] the point of the situation we face today. Democracy requires service from each and every one of us.” In Eleanor’s view, real national defense meant the mobilization of the country as a whole, so that every individual could receive training to help end poverty and make the community a better place in which to live.

Franz tipped his wing and looked down on the P-38 he had wounded. It was circling downward, its engine coughing black smoke. Suddenly the hood of its canopy tumbled away in the slipstream. The pilot stood in the cockpit then dove toward the rear of the wing. The draft sucked his body under the forked tail. He free-fell from twelve thousand feet, passing through the clouds. “Pull it!” Franz shouted at the American, urging him to open his chute. When the pilot’s parachute finally popped full of air, Franz felt relief. The pilot drifted lazily downward while his P-38 splashed into the sea. Franz flew lower and saw the P-38 pilot climb into a tiny yellow raft against the whitecaps. Franz radioed Olympus to tell them to relay the American’s position to the Italians. He guessed they were seventy kilometers west of Marettimo and asked if the island could send a boat to pick up the man. For a second, Franz considered hovering over the man in the raft like an aerial beacon to steer a boat to the spot, but he shook the thought from his mind. It would put him at risk. If a prowling flight of enemy fighters found him, Franz knew he, too, could be shot into the sea. Franz and Willi departed the scene, leaving the pilot in his raft to fate. As they flew away, Franz wished the man a strong westerly wind. The American who looked up from the raft was Second Lieutenant Conrad Bentzlin, a young man from a large Swedish-American family in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was quiet and hardworking, having taught himself English in high school. He had paid his way through the University of Minnesota by working for the government’s Civilian Conservation Corps program, cutting firebreaks in the forests of northern Minnesota. Among his buddies of the 82nd Fighter Group, Bentzlin was known as “the smartest guy in the unit.” Far from shore Bentzlin floated alone. A day later, another flight of P-38s flew over him and, through a hole in the clouds, saw him waving his arms from a raft. But he was in the middle of the sea and they could do nothing. Bentzlin would never be seen again.*

In New Jersey, for example, Governor Harold Hoffman refused to allow any camps for African American corps members because of what he termed “local resentment.” The national CCC director, Robert Fechner, implemented a policy never to “force colored companies on localities that have openly declared their opposition to them.

In its nine years of existence, it’s said that the Civilian Conservation Corps planted between two and three billion trees, cleared thirteen thousand miles of hiking trails, built more than forty thousand bridges and three thousand fire towers, helped establish more than seven hundred new state parks, made improvements in ninety-four national parks or monument areas, and developed fifty-two thousand acres of public campgrounds.

Roosevelt’s administration ensured that African Americans were hired both by the New Deal agencies and by government contractors. The Work Projects Administration employed 350,000 African American workers, who accounted for 15 percent of the WPA’s workforce. African Americans comprised more than 10 percent of the National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration issued contracts only to companies that agreed to hire a certain number of African American workers.41

Perkins was one of only two top aides to stay with Roosevelt for his entire term as president. She became one of the tireless champions of the New Deal. She was central to the creation of the Social Security system. She was a major force behind many of the New Deal jobs programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Works Agency, and the Public Works Administration. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act she established the nation’s first minimum wage law and its first overtime law. She sponsored federal legislation on child labor and unemployment insurance.

New Deal legislation undoubtedly saved thousands of lives and prevented destitution for millions. New labor laws led to a flourishing of unions and built a strong white middle class. The Social Security Act of 1935 established the principle of cash payments in cases of unemployment, old age, or loss of a family breadwinner, and it did so as a matter of right, not on the basis of individual moral character. But the New Deal also created racial, gender, and class divisions that continue to produce inequities in our society today. Roosevelt’s administration capitulated to white supremacy in ways that still bear bitter fruit. The Civilian Conservation Corps capped Black participation in federally supported work relief at 10 percent of available jobs, though African Americans experienced 80 percent unemployment in northern cities. The National Housing Act of 1934 redoubled the burden on Black neighborhoods by promoting residential segregation and encouraging mortgage redlining. The Wagner Act granted workers the right to organize, but allowed segregated trade unions. Most importantly, in response to threats that southern states would not support the Social Security Act, both agricultural and domestic workers were explicitly excluded from its employment protections. The “southern compromise” left the great majority of African American workers—and a not-insignificant number of poor white tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and domestics—with no minimum wage, unemployment protection, old-age insurance, or right to collective bargaining.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, was set up in 1933 to give work to young men who were unemployed and whose families were having a hard time of it. President Roosevelt had just changed the age minimum for the Corps and Gene joined up to go off on what he expected to be a great adventure, rebuilding the roads, bridges, and forests of America.

The record of legislation passed and signed into law is simply astonishing. March 9. Roosevelt signed the Emergency Banking Relief Act. March 20. Roosevelt signed the Economy Act, reorganizing the government and cutting salaries and the pensions of veterans—perhaps the most potent lobby in Washington at that time—to reduce expenses by $500 million. March 21. Roosevelt signed the Civilian Conservation Corps Reforestation Relief Act, to employ up to 250,000 young men in construction and environmental projects. March 22. Roosevelt signed the Beer-Wine Revenue Act, legalizing beer and wine with less than 4 percent alcohol and taxing it heavily to increase government revenue. April 19. Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard, demonetized gold by making gold coins no longer legal tender and recalling them to the Treasury, and forbidding citizens to hold bullion. The next year he devalued the dollar from $20.66 to an ounce of gold to $35.00. May 12. Roosevelt signed the Federal Emergency Relief Act to provide grants totaling $500 million to states to fund relief for the unemployed. May 12. Roosevelt also signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act to relieve farmers with measures to raise farm prices, limit production, and refinance farm mortgages. May 18. Roosevelt signed the bill authorizing the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority to develop the Tennessee River Valley by building dams that would provide electric power in seven states. May 27. Roosevelt signed the Federal Securities Act, which required full disclosure of pertinent information to investors, the first federal regulation of the securities business. June 5. Congress by joint resolution canceled clauses in contracts requiring payment in gold. June 6. Roosevelt signed the National Employment Act establishing the U.S. Employment Service to work with state employment agencies to help the unemployed find jobs. June 13. Roosevelt signed the Home Owners Refinancing Act establishing the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which was empowered to issue $2 billion in bonds to help nonfarm home owners keep their properties. June 16. Roosevelt signed the Banking Act of 1933, usually known as the Glass-Steagall Act after its congressional sponsors. It revolutionized American banking.

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Civilian Conservation Corps.