I’d always had the annual Civilian Conservation Corps picnic on my list of things to do here at The New Era, but it comes every year at a time when I, for various reasons, find it difficult to make it up to Longbow Organizational Camp, a few miles east of Cascadia. This year I made sure I went.
As you probably know, if you’ve been a reader of The New Era for any length of time, the picnic honors “alumni” of the public work relief program, which operated from 1933 to 1942.
I’ve always been interested in the CCC, though until recently I didn’t really know that much about it other than what I read in a few paragraphs in history books or saw on PBS. But in the last few years, watching what’s been happening in Washington D.C., seeing welfare rates soar, I’ve been thinking a lot more about the CCC.
That’s one reason why I was really eager to go to this year’s picnic. I’m always interested in talking to 90-year-olds who can communicate clearly. I’m interested in the insights they have from the years they’ve lived that I haven’t.
It’s particulalry interesting to talk with 90-year-old men who are still very proud of their participation in what essentially was a welfare program. But unlike today’s welfare, this employed some good, old-fashioned creativity and accomplishment.
Even though the “traditional” Judeo-Christian/Puritan work ethic has undergone a trashing by our modern society, which clearly is smarter than any of its predecessors, there’s something to be said for the value of labor.
I look at individuals I know who are unemployed for reasons other than retirement and I don’t see happy, fulfilled people. Yeah, it’s fun to fish every day for a while, but I believe human beings are wired to be gainfully employed – even if we don’t think we like it.
That’s the glaring difference between the CCC guys and most of today’s welfare recipients.
Here in the Sweet Home area, CCC Company 2097, formerly Company 1314, was organized in 1933. The members moved to Camp Cascadia, located along the South Santiam River east of Sweet Home, in 1934. Company 2097 built 35 miles of forest roads and 80 miles of trails in the Willamette National Forest; installed 17 miles of telephone lines; built six fire lookouts and eight bridges; landscaped four acres of grounds near the Cascadia Ranger Station; constructed two large dwellings, an office building and a gas and oil station; and constructed House Rock, Fernview, Trout Creek and Longbow campgrounds. The men also spent over 7,000 days fighting wildfires.
The camps were operated under a military-style organization that included basic training for each participant and fairly strict discipline. In talking with the “alums” at the picnic, nearly all of them, unprompted, said they learned discipline and leadership in their CCC experience. They really didn’t mention much else, except to tell a few war stories about their weekend outings. They were proud of what the camps had taught them.
Many of the company’s members stayed in Oregon, and have since become important figures in local communities. Each of those at the reunion picnic, not all of whom served at Camp Cascadia, by the way, was not only proud of what he and his mates had accomplished, but they were all – most noticeably – very self-confident. Ninety-year-old people, in my experience, are generally not too concerned about what others think, but with these guys it was more than that. It was quiet self-assuredness, the kind you get when you’ve overcome obstacles, when you’ve accomplished things, when you’ve seen a lot of territory.
Another notable detail is that all of the five at this year’s picnic went straight from the CCC to the military when World War II broke out. At least three of them spent more than 20 years in the military before retiring and moving on to other successful endeavors – teaching, management, etc. As one commented to me, “It was a pretty smooth transition from the CCC to the military. We’d already been trained.”
This isn’t the place to debate the rightness or wrongness of government assistance. It’s pretty clear that the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of the major milestones that have led to what we are seeing today – increased government “support” for many Americans and the looming possibilities of much more in the form of protection from social risks (food stamps, welfare programs, extended unemployment benefits, guaranteed health care, bail-outs of big companies, forced negotiation of mortgages – reducing the opportunity and incentive to succeed because no one is allowed to fail. Oh, and the redistribution of wealth from those who create it to those who don’t.)
I wonder, though, what the toll is on character and self-image when I stand in the line at the grocery checkout counter and see the proliferation of Oregon Trail cards, when I hear about high school students who boldly state that they don’t intend to get a job because they’re going to live off the same, when I drive around town and see able-bodied people standing in their yards, smoking cigarettes (or worse) and chatting on their cellphones because they clearly don’t have much to do. I don’t see anything close to the results of CCC. I see people whose self-respect is being drained away by non-productivity, by sloth.
Though I have to confess that I’m fundamentally opposed to general government welfare on a philosophical level, it’s interesting to consider what public benefit could be accomplished by making the existing welfare hand-out system into a CCC-style enterprise.
Think of all those roads and trails (built by CCC men) falling into disrepair in the national forest because the U.S. Forest Service can’t afford to keep them up. Think about all those trees in those same overgrown forests, overgrown because of ill-conceived, ignorant court judgments and resulting executive and bureaucratic policies, that need to be thinned to reduce disease and fire risk.
Think about something as simple as the garbage lying along our roads and highways that could be cleaned up by people who apparently otherwise have nothing to do than participate in domestic squabbles or watch TV. Think about how cash-strapped local governments and school districts could maybe use some muscle.
Of course there would be issues to work through with government employee unions and government programs are notoriously inefficient, so a modern-day CCC wouldn’t be a panacea.
But if it could produce men and women who had even a little self-respect from doing projects that contributed to the public good, who have a greater sense that gainful employment makes you feel a lot better about yourself and behave better, it would be well worth it.