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Saturday, May 17, 2014

Civilian Conservation Corps Begins in 1933

When the Civilian Conservation Corps was begun in 1933 by Congress, North Carolina was allowed to place 6,500 unemployed young men, who would be trained at Fort Bragg. The requirement were that the men be fit, unmarried, unemployed and between the ages of 18 and 25. They had to be citizens and have dependents to whom they would allot a substantial portion of their $20 per month cash allowance. In the 1930s, dependents did not mean wife and children. It meant mothers, fathers, and brothers and sisters still living at home. The state selected the men.

“The young unmarried men are being selected partly because of the type of work and camp life involved, and partly because young unmarried men have had the great difficulty in recent years in securing either work or relief. Some of them never have had a chance to hold down a job since they left school. The work is reserved for those men who have dependents and want to help them, rather than for unattached, homeless transients because the money can be used more productively if it benefits whole families rather than individuals.

“Married men are not being selected unless resident in the vicinity of the forest camp, because it is believe it would be less fitting to separate married men from their families for a six-month period on the basis of a cash allowance of $30 per month, which is all that can, at present be paid for the work. Expansion of other public works, however, is a prospect reserved for such married men.

“There is no discrimination being made in the selecting of the young men for the work except that no person ‘under conviction for crime or serving a sentence shall be employed.’”

From the May 20, 1933 issue of Happy Days, the authorized weekly newspaper of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Happy Days was privately owned, and not published by the U.S. government.
“We are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a million of the unemployed, especially the young men who have dependents, to go into the forestry and flood-prevention work. This great group of men have entered upon their work on a purely voluntary basis, with no military training, and we are conserving not only our national resources but our human resources.”
                                               --FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Forest Camps to be Filled by July

5,400 Men will Move Into Work Camps Each Day--Rate of Movement to Be Greater Than That of Troops During War


Placing 275,000 workers in the forest camps by July 1 is the task confronting Robert Fechner, Director of the Emergency Conservation Work authorized by Congress at the instigation of President Roosevelt.

Orders have gone out that the complete national quota of men for this employment in the national and state forests must be established in work camps by that date.

It means that it will be necessary to enroll men at the rate of 8,540 per day and condition and install them in the work camps at the rate of 5,400 each day.

Such an average—receiving, processing and equipping 8,540 men a day—is greater than that maintained by both the Army and Navy of the United States during the World war.

W. Frank Persons of the department of labor, who is directing the selection of the men, has ordered each state to make its complete selection for the work by June 1 and complete their enrollment by June 7.

The war department, then, will have about three weeks to condition and equip the men and send them on into the work camps in the forests of the country. Col. Duncan K. Major Jr., who is in charge of the army’s part in the endeavor, likewise has directed the commanders of the various army corps that these men must be ready for actual work by July 1.

Nearly 200,000 Selected
Governors of many of the eastern states have been asked to increase the number of projects in their respective states to enable the workers to enter upon their labors as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, it might be necessary to transport many of them long distances from their home states, to national forests in the western states.

“To get the young men selected, sent to conditioning camps, equipped and transported to work projects in the forests in so short time is a tremendous job,” Mr. Fechner stated. “It will require that all the departments connected with this work operate at top speed for the next six weeks.”

The labor department already has made selection of nearly 200,000 men and Mr. Persons has told Mr. Fechner that he can present 9,000 or 10,000 men per day for enrollment.

Will Be 1,350 Camps
The forest service of the department of agriculture and the national park and Indian services of the department of agriculture stand ready to put the young men to work as fast as they reach the camps in the woods.

A total of 1,350 forest camps will be needed to accommodate the 275,000 men. Of this number more than a thousand have been selected. May 25 has been set as the last day when recommendations for the establishment of camps on state and privately owned lands will be received.

Up to the present time approximately 100,000 have been enrolled at conditioning camps, and 15,000 members of the Civilian Conservation Corps have been located in the forest camps.

Types of Work
Among the types of work which will be done by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Mr. Fechner lists the following:

1.       Forest protection work which will include the construction of trails through the forest over which fire fighting units can operate speedily in event of fire break out in the future, the building of fire breaks, construction of lookout towers, observatories, fire guard cabins, shelter for fire protection equipment, laying of field telephone wires and the construction of emergency fire control landing fields.

2.       Forest improvement work to include tree planting over burned out and cut over areas, the thinning out of undesirable trees, the construction of truck and horse trails and the eradication of insects and diseases which destroy large numbers of trees.

3.       Flood control and soil erosion work where such works will serve to protect or improve existing forested areas.

10-Year Program
The setting aside of funds sufficient to maintain a work force of at least 275,000 men in the forest areas for a six-month period will allow the Federal and State Forest Services to go ahead with improvement programs which have lagged due to lack of funds.

Major Robert Stuart, chief of the Forest Service, says that the President’s Emergency Forestation program will permit the Forest Service to complete its 10-year forest improvement program in two years.
Work is to be performed on National Forests, National Parks and Monuments, Indian Reservations, Military Reservations, State and privately owned lands and unreserved unappropriated lands of the public domain. All told there are more than 170 million acres of timbered areas throughout the country, counting National, State and private lands.

Smallest Overhead
“Much of the work to be performed on the different classes of reservations is the same and is directed primarily toward conservation of the forests and park areas,” says Mr. Fechner.

“All work is planned as to involve the smallest amount possible of investment in overhead, including machinery, and the giving of employment to the greatest number of persons possible.

“While this whole conservation program is primarily a forestry program, Mr. Fecher added, “in the National Parks and Monuments and in the State Parks it must be conducted with detailed attention to the landscape values. Removal of underbrush, dead trees, windfalls, and other natural forest debris from old forests should be undertaken only to such an extent as may be needed to remove serious fire hazards.”

Ground Cover Essential
“A certain amount of ground cover is essential in the complete protection of bird life and small mammals which are such an important park feature. Timber cutting may be undertaken only when it is designed to improve the quality of young growth on cut-over or burned-over lands. When planting is done, it is imperative that only species native to the area be used, and row planting is banned.

“All conservation work in the parks and monuments,” he said, “is planned solely in line with the two principal duties of the National Park Service: To keep these areas in their primitive wilderness condition while at the same time making possible their use by the visiting public.


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