Prevent Forest Fires and Improve Your Own Life in CCC, 1933

“It’s a Worthy Job That Awaits Men in Forests” by Robert Fechner, Director, Emergency Conservation Work, 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.

Workers Given Opportunity to Benefit Themselves and the Nation--A Personal Message to Men in Woods From Director of Emergency Conservation Work

You men in the forests, or about to go into the forests to carry on the Emergency Conservation Work, have a real task to perform. You are workers. You are not the objects of charity, nor are you in any respect a part of the U.S. Army. You have been given jobs by the federal and state governments to do work that needs to be done. Work that in many instances has been neglected in other years. It is important work, the results of which should enhance the value of the national and state forests and parks enormously.

Likewise, you are being given an opportunity of finding yourselves. I should like for each one of you to gain an understanding of this opportunity which has been afforded you—the opportunity to add to your own welfare and to the welfare of the nation.

You have been sent into the forests not to just chop around with no effective aim toward a definite accomplishment. You have been sent there to effect, so far as possible by you, a repair of the prodigal waste which has been visited upon our forest lands—by fire, by insects and disease, by the uneconomic use of years ago.

I am not unmindful, nor should you be, of the opportunity this work also will give each of you for physical and mental health. This period which you will spend in the woods should be of inestimable benefit to your bodies and to minds which have been harassed by the fears of unemployment.

The army was given the task of equipping the men and supervise the camp locations because they were best qualified to carry through this feature of the work with dispatch and economy.

The forestry department is furnishing you with expert supervision of your work. The department of labor selected you for the jobs. The departments of agriculture and the interior has located you at those places in the forests where your work will count the most.

Your willingness to do the job well will make a success of this joint endeavor to give you men work to do and to give to our forests the protection which they deserve.