THE TREE ARMY

A Pictorial History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933 to 1942.
By Stan Cohen

The Civilian Conservation Corps was not an idea that occurred to Democratic presidential candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1932. He had been a conservationist for many years and as a governor of New York, had put some of the later CCC concepts into practice. It was clear to Roosevelt that something drastic had to be done about unemployment of youth and the waste of natural resources.

By 1932 more than five million young men were unemployed, and World War I veterans in huge numbers were also without jobs. These men roamed the country looking for work, went on the welfare rolls, or turned to crime.

Millions of acres of farmland were being eroded. Millions more were being threatened by fire or indiscriminate timber harvesting. Recreational opportunities were being lost because of budget and personnel problems.

Two days after Roosevelt's inauguration on March 4, 1933, the new president called a meeting of high government officials to create a Civilian Conservation Corps.

Roosevelt's plan was to put up to 500,000 unemployed youths to work in forests, parks, and rangelands.

The Army would run the camps. The agriculture and interior department would be responsible for work projects and provide the personnel to manage them. The budget director would provide the financial assistance and the solicitor and judge advocate would offer legal advice. The Department of Labor would coordinate the selection of enrollees. Roosevelt stressed the importance of speed. The government officials said they could do the job.

On March 21, the President sent a message to the 73rd Congress on the establishment of the organization.

Roosevelt got the go-ahead from Congress on March 31. He had full authority to proceed at his discretion to establish the CCC.

Rather than establish a new federal bureaucracy, the President used the existing War, Agriculture, Interior and Labor departments. The organization was first called Emergency Conservation Work, but the name used by Roosevelt in his congressional speech, Civilian Conservation Corps, was the popular one. Not until 1937, however, was the name made official by Congress.

Thirty-seven days elapsed between Roosevelt's inauguration and the signing of the first enrollee on April 7, 1933. Henry Rich of Alexandria, Virginia, was sent to Camp Roosevelt near Luray, Virginia. A miracle of cooperation among government agencies had occurred. Even mobilization during World War I did not match the CCC effort.

The initial call was for 250,000 "boys" to be enrolled by July 1, 1933. They were to be unemployed, between 18 and 25 years old and unmarried. They were to come from families on relief. Men from every part of the country, from cities and farms, signed up and they were sent to every part of the country. On April 14, enrollment of 14,000 Indians was authorized because of chronic unemployment and soil erosion on the reservations. These men stayed on the reservations and lived at home under the jurisdiction of the Office of Indian Affairs. On April 22, enrollment of 24,000 "Local Experienced Men," or "L.E.M." was authorized. These usually were older men who had experience in wood craft and were hired to supervise the work crews. The Forest Service, which was responsible for most of the camp projects, did not have the manpower to manage the thousands of youths enrolling. On May 11, 24,000 veterans of World War I, men in their 30's and 40's, were authorized for enrollment. Due to severe unrest and unemployment among the veterans, especially during the Bonus Army trouble of 1932, a partial solution to the problems was the enrollment of veterans in their own conservation camps.

Initially the enrollees were sent to conditioning camps at existing army bases. Here the enrollees went through days of exercise before being sent to their assigned camps.

Except for a few installation in Northern states, camps were racially segregated: white, Negro and Indian. An effort was made to integrate the camps for war veterans, but it did not work out.

Nearly 200,000 blacks were enrolled during the life of the CCC. Several camps for women were reported to have been established in New Hampshire in New York, but the CCC was mainly a man's organization.

... the CCC was well-established in 1933: 275,000 men encamped across the United States in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

On July 17, 1933, President Roosevelt made a radio address to the CCC that typified his thoughts about the organization he had created. He said:

"Men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, I think of you as a visible token of encouragement to the whole country. You -- nearly 300,000 strong -- are evidence that the nation is still strong enough and broad enough to look after its citizens.

You are evidence that we are seeking to get away as fast as possibly from soup kitchens and free rations, because the government is paying you wages and maintaining you for actual work -- work which is needed now and for the future and will bring a definite financial return to the people of the nation.

Through you the nation will graduate a fine group of strong young men, clean-living, trained to self-discipline and, above all, willing and proud to work for the joy of working.

Too much in recent years large numbers of our population have sought out success as an opportunity to gain money with the least possible work.

It is time for each and every one of us to cast away self-destroying nation-destroying efforts to get something for nothing, and to appreciate that satisfying reward and safe reward come only through honest work.

That must be the new spirit of the American future.

You are the vanguard of that new spirit."