Within weeks of receiving a presidential message from Franklin Roosevelt concerning relief of unemployment, Congress passed this emergency act authorizing a Civilian Conservation Corps. The act provided for housing, meals, medical care, education and payment to citizens who would work on public projects conserving forests, rivers, parks and reservation lands.
…for the purpose of relieving the acute condition of widespread distress and unemployment now existing in the United States, and in order to provide for the restoration of the country’s depleted natural resources and the advancement of an orderly program of useful public works…
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration
S. 598, An Act for the relief of unemployment through the performance of useful public work and for other purposes, March 31, 1933
Making Conservation Work
To combat the staggering unemployment of the Great Depression and preserve the nation’s natural resources, Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933. Before its demise in 1942, the CCC employed more than three million young men on conservation projects in every state. The CCC was one of the most popular programs of the New Deal.
Within weeks of receiving a presidential message from Franklin Roosevelt concerning relief of unemployment, Congress passed this emergency act authorizing a Civilian Conservation Corps. The act provided for housing, meals, medical care, education and payment to citizens who would work on public projects conserving forests, rivers, parks and reservation lands.
…for the purpose of relieving the acute condition of widespread distress and unemployment now existing in the United States, and in order to provide for the restoration of the country’s depleted natural resources and the advancement of an orderly program of useful public works…
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration
