Rightful Heritage: The Renewal of America

by Douglas Brinkley

  During his first moments as the thirty-second president of the United States, Roosevelt announced, “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”31 The memorable phrase about “fear itself” became almost synonymous with FDR and would be his reelection slogan in 1936. Historians have celebrated Roosevelt’s first inaugural address for its brave and rousing rhetoric. The concept of living without fear wasn’t new; famous writers from Cicero to Shakespeare to Daniel Defoe had all contemplated it. But such unhinged confidence had never been so operatically expressed by an American politician. The inauguration of 1933 turned out to be one of the three most important in American history, along with Washington’s first inaugural in 1789 and Lincoln’s in 1861. When asked years later about FDR’s greatest public moment, Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t cite the Social Security Act of 1935, the military mobilization after Pearl Harbor, or the logistic genius of the Normandy invasion; she chose his “fear itself” oration.32

  Between March 9 and June 16, Roosevelt proposed and Congress passed fifteen major emergency acts, which, taken together, would deeply and permanently alter America’s social, political, and environmental complexion. With the full force of Congress behind him, Roosevelt prescribed minimum wages and prices, told farmers which crops to plant, regulated Wall Street, and underwrote credit for homeowners. What became known as the “Hundred Days” set a new benchmark for governmental productivity. Even Prohibition was repealed. Congress, under pressure from the White House to act quickly, passed the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which stabilized the banking industry and restored the country’s faith in the financial system. That law was followed in May 1933 by the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, allocating $200 million to refinance mortgages so that farmers could avoid foreclosure. The following month saw the passage of the Farm Credit Act of 1933, which established local banks and created local credit associations. Humorist Will Rogers famously quipped, “Congress doesn’t pass legislation any more, they just wave at the bills as they go by.”33

  During those first “Hundred Days” Congress also passed many new legislative measures inspired by FDR, to provide job relief for the unemployed and jump-start the economy. These measures—known as the New Deal’s “alphabet soup” programs—included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA); the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA); the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA); and the Public Works Administration (PWA). Few programs in 1933 would shine brighter than the conservation-based Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Soil Conservation Service (SCS), and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The CCC probably best captured the public’s imagination as the showcase of the New Deal, along with the more grown-up and grandiose, Works Progress Administration (WPA). Roosevelt knew that large-scale dams and scenic highways would take years to complete. But employing 250,000 young men to cut trails, plant trees, dig archaeological sites, and bring ecological integrity to public lands was immediately effective can-do-ism. That spring half a dozen governors cabled to FDR, wanting first-wave CCC camps established in their states. Roosevelt knew he was panning gold when even Senator Ellison Smith of South Carolina, an early and vocal skeptic, called the Emergency Conservation Work Act a “marvelous piece of legislation.”34

  Just days after his inauguration, Roosevelt instructed Nelson Brown to plant thousands of trees on the Springwood subsidiary, Creek Road Farm, in Hyde Park. Since 1930 Roosevelt and Brown had developed a first-rate forest demonstration plot at Hyde Park. With proper cultivation and plenty of fertilizer, Roosevelt would showcase a model tree farm, twice the size of the nearby Vanderbilt estate holdings. “I wish you would make a note of having a careful inspection made of the swamp area planted last year,” Roosevelt wrote to Brown. “The permanent tree crop consisted of tulip poplars and black walnuts and these were interspersed with, I think, red cedar and larch. This planting should be filled out to replace trees that have died. During the winter I had all the sprouts cut off from the stumps of the old trees that had been cut.”35

  That FDR, with the crushing weight of the Great Depression on his shoulders, found time for planting trees at Springwood in March 1933 was tangible proof of his long-held conservationist convictions. “Forests, like people, must be constantly productive,” Roosevelt told the Forestry News Digest. “The problems of the future of both are interlocked. American forestry efforts must be consolidated, and advanced.”36 To that end he wanted to use forests to ease the crisis at hand. “If you have not got accurate figures as to the number of men who could be permanently employed per hundred acres of national forests, state forests, or private forests,” Roosevelt wrote to Ferdinand A. Silcox, the head of the Forest Service, “would it be a good idea to send someone to Europe to get us the data? . . . They have been at it for hundreds of years.”37

  IV

  On March 14, Roosevelt issued a memorandum for the secretaries of war, the interior, and agriculture, making good on his campaign promise. “I am asking you to constitute yourselves an informal committee of the Cabinet to coordinate the plans for the proposed Civilian Conservation Corps. These plans include the necessity of checking up on all kinds of suggestions that are coming in relating to public works of various kinds. I suggest that the Secretary of the Interior act as a kind of clearing house to digest the suggestions and to discuss them with the other three members for this informal committee.”38

  People soon wondered where FDR came by the idea of the CCC. The obvious answer is that in 1932, after FDR had established conservation-reforestation programs in New York, other states, such as California and Pennsylvania, had done the same. It just made practical common sense. A rumor circulated, and still has academic currency, that the concept of the CCC emanated from the eminent Harvard philosopher, William James’s pacifist essay “The Moral Equivalent of War,” delivered at Stanford University in 1906 and published in 1910 in McClure’s magazine. Dr. James believed that instead of military service, a “conscription of the whole youthful population” to form an “army enlisted against Nature” would cause young men to get the “childishness knocked out of them,” so that they would “tread the earth more proudly.”39 Roosevelt brushed that rumor aside, pointing out that he had not studied with James, nor did he remember carefully reading the celebrated essay. Roosevelt had once seen James walking in the streets of Cambridge, and marveled at his famous beard—but that was all. Yet FDR did publicly declare at a Harvard reunion that William James’s mind was a “sword” in the “service of American freedom.”40 And despite his dismissal, Roosevelt’s personal papers at the presidential library in Hyde Park include a typescript excerpt from the McClure’s essay.41 Whatever the case, the spirit of the CCC, including many of its organizational details, was entirely concocted by Roosevelt.

  FDR convened the first meeting of the quartet of cabinet members that March. The team was composed of George Dern, from War; Henry A. Wallace, from Agriculture; Harold Ickes, from Interior; and Frances Perkins, from Labor. During the meeting Roosevelt nonchalantly sketched, on a scrap of paper, a flowchart of the CCC chain of command. As Perkins later explained, Roosevelt “put the dynamite” under his cabinet members and let them “fumble for their own methods.”42 The president envisioned Interior and Agriculture selecting project locations and dispatching recruits to staff the camps. Lewis Douglas, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would provide the financial resources for improving public lands infrastructure. The U.S. Army’s judge advocate general, Blanton C. Winship, would offer legal services. Roosevelt envisioned three types of camps: forestry (concentrated in national forest sites); soil (dedicated to combating erosion and implementing other soil conservation measures); and recreational (focused on developing parks and other scenic areas).

  From the get-go Ickes was the New Deal’s notorious taskmaster, with the impatience of a drill sergeant. In a symbolic gesture, Ickes ordered the doors to the Interior head
quarters locked every morning at 9:01. Showing up late for work, by even a few minutes, meant instant dismissal. Throughout Roosevelt’s first term, Ickes promoted state and national parks with pluck and vigor, rebuffing right-wing senators who claimed the CCC was a Bolshevist threat to democracy.43 The New Deal’s sense of striking fast on behalf of conservation appealed mightily to Ickes. “The pace couldn’t have suited Ickes any better,” biographer Jeanne Nienaber Clarke wrote, “for he had been a compulsive worker throughout his life.”44

  Frances Perkins—the first female cabinet officer in U.S. history and one of only two cabinet secretaries to work for the entirety of Roosevelt’s tenure in the White House (the other being Ickes)—was tasked with coordinating the recruitment and selection of able-bodied CCC enrollees. Initially a quarter of a million unemployed “boys” or juniors between ages eighteen and twenty-three (later expanded to twenty-eight) were sought. The pool was later widened to include twenty-five thousand veterans of World War I who had fallen on hard times; twenty-five thousand “Local Experienced Men” (LEM) who worked as project leaders in the junior camps; ten thousand Native Americans, who would be assigned to improve reservations; and five thousand residents of the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.45 Perkins worried that Roosevelt was biting off more than he could chew. However, as the trees got planted, she soon became a believer.

  What made the CCC more than just a dazzling work-relief program was the professional expertise the LEM brought to land reclamation. Skilled young physicians, architects, biologists, teachers, climatologists, and naturalists learned about conservation in a tangible, hands-on way. If not for the Great Depression, these workers would have found themselves engaged in upwardly mobile jobs. But by a twist of fate, as many of their diaries and letters home make clear, these LEM were indoctrinated in New Deal land stewardship principles. Later in life, after World War II, many became environmental warriors, challenging developers who polluted aquifers, and unregulated factories that befouled the air.

  Having developed a working model for the CCC, Roosevelt delivered his plea to launch it with the passage of the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act, which would provide the authority to create, by statute, a “tree army” to provide employment (plus vocational training) and conserve and develop “the natural resources of the United States.”46 He sent his bill to Congress on March 21. As instructed by Perkins and other cabinet officers, Roosevelt made it very clear that reforestation projects wouldn’t interfere with “normal employment.”47

  I propose to create a Civilian Conservation Corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to forestry, the preventing of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects. . . .

  More important, however, than the material gains, will be the moral and spiritual values of such work. The overwhelming majority of unemployed Americans, who are now walking the streets and receiving private or public relief, would infinitely prefer to work. We can take a vast army of these unemployed out into healthful surroundings. We can eliminate to some extent at least the threat that enforced idleness brings to spiritual and moral stability.48

  Roosevelt did a marvelous job of selling the CCC, answering congressmen’s questions forcefully but politely. At six press conferences he invoked public works and the CCC. The biggest obstacle was Congressman William Connery Jr. of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Labor Committee, whose constituents lived in the mill towns of Lawrence and Lowell. To Connery the CCC was “sweatshop work,” a tricky way to undercut labor unions. Insisting that the CCC wasn’t based on conscription but voluntary enrollment, Roosevelt sent Perkins to testify before Congress. She disarmed Connery and older skeptics with her wit and ardor.48 On March 28, the Senate passed the CCC bill with great enthusiasm for the program. What stuck in the craw of many Republicans, however, was the unease that Roosevelt had quickly amassed too much rubber-stamp clout. Senator L. J. Dickinson of Iowa predicted, “We will rue the day when we put so much power into one man’s hands.”49

  The opposition was more visceral in the House. A dissenting voice was Congressman Oscar S. De Priest of Illinois, the only African American member of the House, who objected, to no avail, that the proposed CCC was racially segregated. After a round of debate, the Seventy-Third Congress passed S. 598, Public Law No. 5 on March 31, creating the CCC as a temporary emergency work-relief program.50 Roosevelt’s unstated hope was that what the New Republic called his “tree army” would eventually become a permanent agency. On April 5 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6101, allowing him to appoint the CCC director and the advisory council composed of representatives of War, Agriculture, Interior, and Labor.51

  Roosevelt hired AFL labor leader Robert Fechner as the first director of the CCC.53 Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Fechner, born in poverty, left school at age sixteen and moved to Georgia to become a “candy butcher” on trains. Mild-mannered and collaborative by nature, Fechner earned his way through an apprenticeship to become a trained machinist, working in mines, smelters, and harbor projects in the United States and throughout Mexico and Central America.54 Modeling himself on labor leader Samuel Gompers, Fechner eventually became vice president of the International Association of Machinists, and he persuaded its members to vote for Roosevelt in 1932.55 A proponent of the nine-hour workday in 1901 and the eight-hour workday in 1915, Fechner was an intrepid labor reformer. Although he was a southerner, Boston became his home base. Because of his sterling reputation for fairness—as well as his union background—he proved an inspired choice.

  William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), complained vigorously to the New York Times that the CCC reforestation program caused “grave apprehension in the hearts and minds of labor.”56 Green testified before Congress that the U.S. Army’s involvement in the CCC would “militarize labor.”57 Convinced that the CCC would steal work away (at bargain-basement prices) and depress wages, Green charged that the CCC “smacked of fascism, of Hitlerism, or a form of Sovietism.”58 By appointing the likable Fechner, a pro at making things run smoothly, the president cleverly assured Congress that Green was wrong, that an experienced labor leader held the keys to the entire CCC enterprise. Indeed, the shrewd hiring of Fechner mollified detractors of the work-relief program in organized labor circles.59

  By mid-April, the program was coming to life. According to Roosevelt’s estimation, an eleven-man CCC crew could, weather permitting, plant five thousand to six thousand trees per day.60 Surrounded by maps of America, the president studied rivers and streams, deserts and forestlands. “I want,” Roosevelt declared, “to personally check the location and scope of the camps.”61

  Roosevelt’s “tree army” became a legend from the start, and he became a forester in chief hero to many conservation groups. The Izaak Walton League, a Chicago-based nonprofit, honored the nation’s new leader by unanimously electing him its “honorary national president.” That was just an opening salvo. The Society of American Forestry soon awarded FDR the first Schlich Memorial Medal for conceiving the CCC.62 Roosevelt proudly assumed the mantle of natural resource protector, which TR and Pinchot had once worn. As historian David M. Kennedy noted, the public quickly understood that Roosevelt had a “lover’s passion” for trees.63

  All over America, CCC tent cities popped up like Boy Scout camps; they were soon replaced with rustic barracks. To address the ecological concerns registered in the Copeland Report, Roosevelt allotted the initial fifty CCC camps to the Forest Service (over time, 50 percent of all CCC work was done in national forests). Each company unit of two hundred CCC “boys” (unmarried) was a temporary village in itself. All sorts of bylaws, pledges, and rules of engagement were announced. The “CCCers” received three full meals each day, and were issued olive drab uniforms, which included pants, a shirt, gloves, two pairs of underwear, a canteen, and a pair of heavy steel-toed boots. In time, Roosevelt and Fechner changed the uniform to a spruce green colo
r for the coat, pants, overseas cap, and mackinaw (the shirt remained olive). “The issuance of a new uniform distinctive from other governmental services will improve the appearance of the corps,” Fechner noted. “It will also aid in building up and maintaining high morale in the camps.”64

  Unlike the army, there were no guard houses, drills, saluting, or court-martials. But morale was important from 6 a.m. reveille to taps at 10 p.m. At just $30 per month, these young men weren’t going to get rich: $22 to $25 of their pay was mandated to be sent home to their families; what remained was spent at the canteen, on haircuts and snacks, or at the local nickelodeon. Topnotchers were able to boost their salary by becoming technicians. A gag circulated among new enrollees—“Another day, another dollar; a million days, I’ll be a millionaire.” While they uttered it with a degree of sarcasm, the recruits were at least looking at the glass as half full.65

  Uniformed enrollees started working at a breakneck pace to plant millions of trees, restore grass, build check dams, practice rodent control, and kill invasive or destructive animals, prevent wildfires, and teach bankrupt farmers how to form soil conservation districts. No sooner did Congress pass the Emergency Conservation Work Act than Roosevelt prepared to do battle with the “three horsemen” of environmental destruction: fire, insects, and disease.66 Particularly concerned about California’s forests—which drought and arid conditions had made hyper-vulnerable to fire—Roosevelt instructed CCC crews to cut a six-hundred-mile Ponderosa Way firebreak along the base of the Sierra Nevada in California, the longest such protective barrier in the nation.67 The CCC “boys” were also dispatched to do immediate battle in the drought-ravaged Great Plains and the soil-stricken American South. Even Puerto Rico had CCC camps, employing 2,400 men.68