During the depression, work was scarce. As the amount of civilian jobs decreased, the amount of unemployed increased. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected president during this era, began a "New Deal" to help the American people in many ways, and one focus was the unemployment crisis. Many programs were developed for this cause, one of which was the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC.
The CCC was a program that recruited unwed men, 18 to 25 years of age. In this program, these men went to work for the government. The main focus was to have the men doing work on environmental projects, such as environmental preservation. There were many branches of government department aiding in this program, such as the Labor Department, War Department, and Interior department. .
The men involved in the program lived in a military-like setting, being provided with room and board, eating in mess halls, and following a very specific and strict schedule. They were paid thirty dollars a month, but since they were provided with everything they needed there at the camps, the money was usually sent to their families back at home.
This program had employed 2.5 million men by the time it was drawn to a close; however, the camps only employed white men. In an instance where a non-white, non-American male (by government definition) was employed in these camps, they worked separately from the white men. So as it helped many, some of the people who were affected greatly by this era were not helped because of their races.
The program was a great thing to many; however, it was disbanded in 1942. Other programs, such as the Public Works Administration (PWA), the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIAC), the National Recovery Administration (NRA), and later the Works Progress Administration (WPA) were all founded to deal somehow with the unemployment problem or how workers were treated.
