The American Experience: The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) tells a story from the 1930’s about Clifford Hammond, who joined the CCC in 1934, Harley Jolley, who joined in 1937, Vincente Ximenes who joined in 1938, Houston Pritchett who joined in 1939, and the writer Jonathan Alter. These five men from different cultures and backgrounds describe what they experienced during the CCC. The CCC was one of the bravest and most popular New Deal experimentations, employing one of the New Deal programs. The CCC is a fundamental moment in the development of modern environmentalism and federal unemployment relief. This program put three million young men to work in camps across America during the Great Depression. The program had short term effects, There were positive psychological impacts that effected the families as well as the nation. A lot of parents were stressed because they could not provide for their children, so most kids were abandoned or had to leave the house at a young age and try to find a job to help provide. This put stress on the parents as well as the children in the household. As Clifford Hammond said, “Right after high school-I graduated in 33-my dad pretty well ran me off. I hoboed and hitchhiked around, trying to find a job. You’d ride in a boxcar or whatever you could. I asked people if they had work to do if they’d give me something to eat.” In another quote, Hammond stated, “I’ve never they never would let me work. They’d always give me something to eat. I rode the trains, hoboed, for about a year. And then I decided I’d better go home. Too cold to be out like that. So that’s when I heard of the CCC.” The CCC helped young men grow to be happy within their job and life as well as their families. The men were able to provide relief for their families as well as themselves. When the men would go off to camp that would allow the parents to just provide for the other children and also still be stress free while their son was at camp because they knew that the CCC was a safe camp and they would be well taken care of there. The enrollees felt better after joining CCC because they had well prepared meals that some did not have The CCC camp caused public debate. As Vincente Ximenes said, “There was a CCC camp in our community in Texas. And there were some farmers who didn’t like FDR and what he did. He was called a communist, a socialist, and whatever, any name you could find. So, therefore, the CCC also, of course, was no good as far as they were concerned. There was large numbers of people who felt that government intervention is not good for the country.” There was still segregation going on at that time, which made some people go against the camp even though it was helping them out as well. Jonathan Alter said, “The Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, first woman in the cabinet, she said “We can’t pay these people a dollar a day. Organized labor is totally opposed to this.” This could have been a reasonable criticism, but the enrollees were poor and were unemployed for so long, that this observation did not matter. All of the enrollees had a goal and needed the money to accomplish that goal. This was the only opportunity for work at the time for most. Politically, today's issues are handled differently and there is less support and teamwork within our society. In the 1930’s majority including the candidates and congress were supporting and willing to work together as one, and was not afraid to make mistakes to see what needed to be eliminated and what was a success that could
The Hispanic Civil Rights movement emerged before, during, and after World War II. Before World War II, the United States was in its worst economic downfall in history. It was called the Great Depression; the unemployment rate was at 25 percent. Although, the economic collapse was caused by greed and corruption; Mexicans were blamed on the down turn. It was believed that they took all the jobs that belonged to U.S. born citizens. Two million Mexicans were deported back to Mexico and 1.2 million of them were actually U.S. Citizens. During World War
In Mark Fiege’s book “The Republic of Nature,” the author embarks on an elaborate, yet eloquent quest to chronicle pivotal points in American history from an environmental perspective. This scholarly work composed by Fiege details the environmental perspective of American history by focusing on nine key moments showing how nature is very much entrenched in the fibers that manifested this great nation. The author sheds light on the forces that shape the lands of America and humanities desire to master and manipulate nature, while the human individual experience is dictated by the cycles that govern nature. The story of the human experience unfolds in Mark Fiege’s book through history’s actors and their challenges amongst an array of environmental possibilities, which led to nature being the deciding factor on how
Overall, I believe that the war was responsible for impacting four main social attitudes – the morale of the public, the class barriers, the crime rate and the status of women. Even though society attempted to go back to normal after the war, it could not go back completely. People had seen women work, they had felt what it was like to work together with the community, and although it took years and years after the war for it to happen, attitudes eventually changed for the better. The war, just happened to instigate this transformation of the views of society.
Boyd talks about how everyone was very eager to volunteer to join the military to have fun and to make some money and it seemed to be very easy because the war was expected to be very short. Things started to look a bit different even when, the volunteers got to the first destination to be sworn into duty. They started to wonder why they were being sworn in to service for 3 years when they all thought the war was going to be very short. Boyd and the rest of them figured that the government must know something more than everyone else knows. Even during the beginning of the service the conditions for the service did not look as good as they had expected, and the officer had seen that the volunteers started having second guesses about doing it so they put them into more comfortable quarters to keep them from going home. During the war most of the time the conditions were horrible. There were many problems with the soldiers during the war. Many died from being wounded, being shot, and the worst of all was the disease. The conditions were so horrible that many men couldn't get enough sleep and even when they did get sleep they were sleeping in the rain or in the snow.
A Relief Committee was set up to assist people. The committee was given the task of organizing and distributing food, supplies, and money to all those in need. Contributions for almost everything came in from around the world, totaling up to almost $5,000,000. The political economy made sure that even though the main focus was on reconstruction, that men were continuing to receive fair retirement. They were also determined to keep the doors open and full of opportunities for future young men.
For example, the AAA destroyed food when people where hungry and only helped better off farm-owners not farm workers. The CCC was very low paid and was not compulsory. TVA flooded some farm lands also the PWA/WPA provided some jobs which were described as boondoggling. E.g. Balloons to scare away pigeons or sweeping leaves. Right wing critics said it went too far in interfering with people lives, and hated increased taxes and government policies. Whereas, left wing critics said it didn’t do enough for the poor. Roosevelt gave too much power to the federal government and the presidency. The federal government was becoming directly involved in areas which had traditionally been managed by state governments.
The "Roaring Twenties" were a turbulent time in American history. The United States had just returned from the carnage of World War I and was ready to revolutionize their ideas, morals, and most importantly, their presidents. The presidential election of 1920 was a particularly integral election due to the introduction of the right of women to vote and America's social & political unrest. Warren G. Harding, a Republican, defeated Democrat James M. Cox, on a platform that urged Americans to "return to normalcy". Normalcy was a play on words of normality by Harding, which meant to conform to the norm. But the question that stood on many historians was: Why did Americans actually vote to "return to normalcy"? The simple answer was that the nation was ready to recover from their wartime anxiety and wanted a country without financial or political stress and Harding was the president that promised that to them.
The Conservation movement was a driving force at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a time during which Americans were coming to terms with their wasteful ways, and learning to conserve what they quickly realized to be limited resources. In the article from the Ladies’ Home Journal, the author points out that in times past, Americans took advantage of what they thought of as inexhaustible resources. For example, "if they wanted lumber for their houses, rails for their fences, fuel for their stoves, they would cut down half a forest at a time; and whatever they could not use or sell they would leave to rot on the ground. They never bothered their heads to inquire where more wood was coming from when this was gone" (33). The twentieth century opened with a vision towards the future, towards preserving the land that had previously been taken for granted. The Conservation movement came along around the same time as one of the first major waves of the feminist movement. With the two struggles going on: one for the freedom of nature and the other for the freedom of women, it stands to follow that they coincided. As homemakers, activists, and citizens of the United States of America, women have had an important role in Conservation.
In the 1930s, the economy was in turmoil due to the stock market crash in 1929. The United States unemployment rate was at its high of twenty-five percent between 1932 and 1933. It was very hard for Pete to find a job.1 More than ten million citizens were out of work. In verse after verse, ”Talking Union” described how to start a union: pass out leaflets, call meetings, resist the attempts of the boss to derail those efforts, for “he’s a bastard-unfair-slave driver-Bet he beats his own wife.”2 March of 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took power and he pledged to save the economy from danger using a plan called the New Deal. The New Deal was a plan to boost the economy back up to its normal state. He pledged to use federal power to ensure a more equitable distribution of income and promised “bold experimentation” in pursuit of what he called a “New Deal” for Americans.3 Roosevelt later stated, “when Americans suffered, h...
...r labor issues of all ages, all fronts were attacked with full pride and confidence. Abandoned or diverted projects in the Progressive movement included many other reform issues that were reinstated during the New Deal. During the New Deal, legislations passed greatly improved the stature of many people who suffered great injustice prior to the Depression and especially during. The Progressive movement, at one time led by Woodrow Wilson and his crusade “triple wall of privilege,” compares directly to Roosevelt and his “three R’s,” both crusading for justice against the ignorance and deception taking place against the ordinary man. These everlasting accomplishments to improve the nation were all completed by the determination and perseverance of the reform groups of the Progressive era, which lay the groundwork for the New Deal, and Franklin Roosevelt, providing a resurgence for what the Progressive movement couldn’t accomplish.
...t units to serve in the civil war. Most blacks did not care about what the issues of the war was. They joined because it provided a better income which was an alternative way of making money compared to the poorly paid domestic labor that most blacks had endure. The civil war resulted in the 13th Amendment of the Constitution which abolished slavery all together. Although black soldiers fought in the war which eventually ended slavery, they still did not have civil rights. The whites did not want to share political power with African Americans. This had brought about the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. African Americans were now guaranteed civil rights. This change opened doors for African Americans so that they can progress and excel in the political system. Public schools were now established and access to jobs outside domestic labor was now available.
The Civilian Conservation Corps, which was established in 1933 to conserve the wilderness and give young able men jobs. This program was one of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that were to bring the country out of the depression. The Civilian Conservation Corps took in unmarried men from ages eighteen to twenty-five and moved them to the wilderness to work. They planted trees, built parks, fought soil erosion, and preformed timber culturing (Davidson 718).
Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Following his inauguration, Roosevelt's attitude toward Blacks displayed little change. He showed little interest in challenging even the most obvious manifestations of racial injustice in the proliferation of New Deal agencies. The National Recovery Administration (NRA), Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), to name only a few, all failed to protect blacks against discriminatory employers, agency officials, and local whites. Many of the programs did not accept
Did you know that every 2 seconds someone in the United States needs blood? Where does that blood come from? The American Red Cross, is a nonprofit humanitarian organization. It assists with disaster relief and provides emergency services to those in need. The American Red Cross has been around for aver 100 years and has come a long way in the process.
1. Introduction "Abundant Rewards." This is the title of an essay that was written by a Peace Corps volunteer, Laura Stedman, on her reflections of her work in Swaziland, serving as a science teacher. The essay discusses her students and what turned out to be her most important accomplishment, to give the children confidence in themselves.