"The CCC" (The Tree Army)

The CCC was originally established by an act of Congress in 1933 as the Emergency Conservation Work Act to provide jobs and alleviate the nations suffering due to the lack of jobs during the Great Depression. Another act in 1937 changed the name to the Civilian Conservation Corps.
When the CCC was formed they accepted young men from 18 to 25 who were physically fit, unemployed and unmarried. In 1935 the age requirement was change to from 17 to 28. The men were paid $30.00 per month, YES per month. $25.00 of that was sent home to the man's family and he received $5.00 for expenses.

The first 25,000 men were enrolled in 1933 and they had increased to 507,782 men by 1939. The average number of camps open at any one time was 1,600. The War Department administered the program and despite the "Civilian" part of it's name it was a military organization. That was probably where earned their nickname, "The Tree Army". The men were grouped into companies which reported to District Headquarters which were associated with Army Corps commands. Its equipment was military in origin - one feature of the CCC was that the young men driving to and fro to projects in the backs of open bed Army trucks. Its officers too, were military men on active duty, Colonels and Captains and Lieutenants who had fought in the last war and would fight in the next.

During their time, the CCC men planted 2,356,000,000 trees. Yes, that's billions. A very large part of their projects were related to forestry and building camp grounds, hiking trails and roads in national forests and parks. Some of their more notable projects included the Skyline Drive in Virginia, the Pacific Crest Trail and the great Appalachian Trail.

Nellie's uncle Bill was in the CCC in the 30's. We still have some of the letters he wrote to his mother and father during that period. Like most men in the armed service, he was always broke and needed money for stamps if he was going to write letters.

"The WPA"

The WPA, which was established May 6, 1935,originally stood for the Works Progress Administration. The name was changed in 1939 to the Works Projects Administration. Its original purpose was to provide economic relief for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers during the Great Depression. Like the CCC money earned in the WPA was sent to the family. The men were paid from $15.00 to $90.00 per month, depending on the job he or she had. When the job required it, housing and food were included.

In 1943, after eight years, the program was phased out. The old joke that they had to send 8 men and 2 shovels for each job, "2 men shoveling, 2 on the pot, 2 a going and 2 a coming back", definitely was not true. During those eight years the WPA built 651,087 miles of highways, repaired 124,087 bridges, constructed 125,110 public buildings, established 8,192 parks and 853 air strips. They build things like courthouses, schools, hospitals, playgrounds and libraries with many still in use. They did much more than put shovels in workers' hands and construct buildings however. The WPA provided free or inexpensive puppet shows, dance recitals, musical presentations, and dramas. They gave jobs to actors, directors, playwrights, scene designers, make-up artists, and orchestras-people who would have remained on breadlines. The WPA also provided jobs to musicians, historians, dancers, actors, cartoonists, writers, and artists.

I remember the when the WPA built a community cannery in Montgomery, Texas. My grandmother used to work in the cannery during the summer while the crops were coming in.

"The NRA" (Blue Eagle)

The National Recovery Administration (NRA), sometime called the "Blue Eagle" because of the signs that businesses were required to post to show they were in compliance with the law. The NRA was supposed to establish codes for each industrial sector and, had it worked as such, would have caused a fundamental change for the role of government in business. However, the NRA did not bring this change. Many people were opposed to the NRA because they feared set price levels would be too high. One reason it didn't work was that large business still continued to dominate the economy because they created most of the codes. At the same time, NRA labor agreements were unpopular with both small business, who feared rising costs, and labor, who felt the agreements did not go far enough. This almost universal opposition to the program, combined with the administrative problems, made it impossible for the agency to effect any fundamental changes. These problems were all solved however, when the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional and shut it down.