“Building Better Men”

Less than one month after his inauguration as president of the United States in March 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC was the first work relief program instituted by Roosevelt's New Deal. ¹ Young unmarried and unemployed men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five were chosen from relief rolls and sent to live and work in wooded camps where they planted trees, built bridges, and fought forest fires. The program undoubtedly developed out of Roosevelt's personal interest in the conservation of natural resources, but even more so, it grew out of a societal concern about the uncertain occupational prospects of America's jobless male youth.