[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 42 (Friday, April 3, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3232-S3233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE CCC's REBUILDING OF AMERICA

 Mr. CLELAND. Mr. President, I rise today to honor President 
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps.
  In March 1933, there were approximately 13,689,000 Americans 
unemployed. Millions were standing in bread lines, or desperately 
pleading with community volunteer organizations for help. Thousands 
were making homes out of abandoned farm buildings, or just roaming 
around the land with no home at all.
  At this time, my home state of Georgia had already known 
``depression'' for some time. An economic recession had begun in 
Georgia 10 years before the stock market crashed in 1929. Farmers had 
already faced a century of troubles including erosion problems, and a 
boll weevil epidemic that wiped out cotton crops across the state.
  Who would have thought that Georgians' great hope would come in the 
form of a New Yorker, stricken by polio, who had sought out the healing 
Warm Springs of Georgia nearly ten years earlier. It was the frequent 
Georgia visitor President Franklin D. Roosevelt who looked out on 
America and said he saw ``one third of a nation ill-clad, ill-housed 
and ill-nourished.'' In response, he offered the people of a suffering 
nation a sweeping bundle of proposals--a New Deal.
  A cornerstone of FDR's initiative was the Civilian Conservation Corps 
(CCC), which was signed into law on April 5, 1933.
  Conceived as an employment catalyst for young men, Roosevelt said his 
idea was ``to create a civilian conservation corps, to be used in 
simple work, not interfering with normal employment, but confining 
itself to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control and 
similar projects.''

[[Page S3233]]

  By the summer of 1933, the CCC had more than 300,000 young men, ages 
18 to 24, in camps across the country prepared to embark on what would 
be the largest public works and job creation project this country has 
ever known. In a radio address that summer, President Roosevelt called 
on the CCC to be the vanguard of the new spirit of the American 
future--a spirit of responsibility and opportunity.
  My father was one of the young men who heard that call. A year later, 
in the summer of 1934, my father was a ``CCC boy'' based in a Clayton 
County camp as a truck driver, running supplies to camps in North 
Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. The CCC boys earned $30 per 
month running supplies like my father, planting trees, building roads 
and trails, making dams and walls and shelters.
  Roosevelt's Corps was dedicated to several purposes. First, FDR 
created the CCC to relieve the massive unemployment problem our nation 
was facing. Second, FDR recognized the real work the CCC could do--
rebuilding the country's depleted resources of forest and soil--would 
be at least as vital a purpose as job creation.
  The third objective of the CCC, whose significance has perhaps become 
even more apparent as years have passed, was generally envisioned by 
FDR in his 1933 message to Congress:

       More important, however, than material gains, will be the 
     moral and spiritual value of such work. We can take a vast 
     army of the unemployed out into healthful surroundings. We 
     can eliminate to some extent at least the threat that 
     enforced idleness brings to spiritual and moral stability.

  In other words, in a nearly inadvertent way, the CCC had the effect 
of not only rebuilding roads, trees and dams, but also of rebuilding 
men. While the challenges our country faces today are vastly different 
than those of 1933, and the makeup of our corps of volunteers has 
become much more diverse than the young ``CCC boys,'' the spirit of 
national service remains strong.
  For example, the work of the more than 40,000 citizens now serving as 
part of the Corporation for National Service's AmeriCorps program is 
powerful proof that national service is as important now as it was for 
my father's generation.
  A group of Georgians who recognize FDR's legacy of hope, opportunity 
and spirit of service are working to erect a statue honoring the 
Civilian Conservation Corps in Warm Springs, GA. How appropriate such a 
recognition would be. Roosevelt's CCC is an important piece of our 
nation's and our state's history, and something that should serve as an 
example for generations to come.

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