Roosevelt's Forest Army · Episode 2 of 14 · 21 min
$30 a Month, $25 Sent Home: Life Inside a CCC Camp
The CCC paid each young man thirty dollars a month and required that twenty-five be mailed home. This episode tells the program at the scale of one life: the daily routine in camp, the weight gained by men who had been hungry, and the education program that taught 40,000 to read. Underneath it runs the soft coercion of economic need.
Where it happens
- Camp Roosevelt, VirginiaAmong the first CCC camps, established April 1933
Timeline
- March 31, 1933Congress passes and Roosevelt signs the Emergency Conservation Work Act
- July 1, 1933About 1,463 camps operating with roughly 250,000 junior enrollees
- 1935Peak strength of roughly half a million men
- 1942Congress ends funding as war absorbs the young men
Still debated
Reported weight gains and the figure of 40,000 men taught to read vary by source. Whether enrollment was truly voluntary or soft-compulsory is a matter of framing.