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2: What was the CCC?
- Minnesota Historical Society Press
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15 I n November 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover to become president of the United States, taking the oath of office on March 4, 1933. In his inaugural address, as another bank panic raged, he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Roosevelt found himself the leader of a nation in a precarious economic state. Determined to put people back to work, he pushed through a series of legislative reforms that, as a group, became known as the New Deal.1 Roosevelt’s primary purpose in developing the New Deal was immediate economic recovery. His was an activist approach to federal government policy . Although Franklin Roosevelt (a Democrat) was from a different political party than his distant cousin, former president Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican), the two shared certain beliefs. Both held that the federal government should place public interest over private interests, that unfair economic practices should be rooted out,and that government should have a role in providing economic security. FDR, as the new president was popularly known, drew on these views as he began to develop New Deal programs. He went to work immediately, and the intense activity that followed—from the opening of a special session of Congress on March 9 until its closing on June 16—came to be called the “Hundred Days.” In that short span of time, the Roosevelt administration 2: WHAT WAS THE CCC? passed the Emergency Banking Act—which closed insolvent banks and restructured remaining ones—along with other wide-ranging legislation, including help for farmers, unemployment relief, reform of the securities market, and regulation of industry. Representing an interventionist and activist approach to government, New Deal programs would become controversial as time passed. But in 1933, they were welcomed as a way to begin to deal with the country’s problems.2 Of all the “alphabet soup” programs to emerge from the New Deal—the aaa (AgriculturalAdjustmentAdministration), cwa (CivilWorksAdministration ), fera (Federal Emergency ReliefAdministration),fha (Federal Housing Administration),nra (National RecoveryAdministration),pwa (PublicWorks Administration), wpa (Works Progress Administration)—the ccc was unique. Officially known as the Emergency Conservation Work Program, or ecw, it almost immediately became popularly known as the Civilian Conservation Corps, or the ccc for short. Another popular nickname for the program— “Roosevelt’sTree Army”—illustrates how closely it was linked in the public’s mind to the newly elected president.3 Roosevelt dropped hints about the ccc even prior to his election. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination in July 1932,he promised to support “a definite land policy” to fight “a future of soil erosion and timber famine....In doing so,employment can be given to a million men.” He called the idea“the kind of public work that is self-sustaining”and said he had “a very definite program for providing employment by that means.”4 More than any other New Deal program, the ccc was most completely Roosevelt’s idea, one he would discuss with his staff just hours after taking office. In essence, the ccc reflected Franklin Roosevelt’s “lover’s passion” for conservation, the management of natural resources for long-term public benefit.While today people often think of conservation as environmentalism, or protecting existing resources, at the time of the ccc it focused on preserving and scientifically managing resources for practical use and economic purposes.As a young man, Roosevelt had absorbed many of these ideas from Gifford Pinchot, the innovative chief forester and founder of the U.S. Forest Service under PresidentTheodore Roosevelt.FDR believed so strongly in the value of conservation that he wished to make his own mark in the field, but in ways that went beyond simple preservation of land.5 The ccc also grew out of FDR’s early interest in developing relief programs to meet conservation needs.As governor of NewYork before he became president , he had tried this approach in a reforestation and unemployment relief program.Roosevelt also was aware of forest service relief programs instituted in California and Washington. When he became president, he was ready to develop a conservation work relief program on a national scale. That readiness contributed to another defining quality of the ccc: it grew from an abstract idea into a real, working program with incredible speed. On March 9, just five days after he took the oath of office, Roosevelt met with the 16 the ccc takes shape [107.20.123...