Full transcript
0:00Hey everybody, this lecture is about the
0:03Civilian Conservation Corps or the CCC.
0:07The CCC was a federal program that
0:11really got to the heart of the New Deal
0:15programs initiated by President Franklin
0:19Delanor Roosevelt in the federal
0:20government between 1933
0:25and 1941.
0:28uh the New Deal kind of larger um you
0:34know series of laws that were passed to
0:37help the uh American people find a way
0:41through the Great Depression
0:43involved America's first instance of
0:47direct intervention
0:50of the federal government into the
0:52American economy and the CCC was an
0:56important part of that because what it
0:58did was create jobs for certain types of
1:03people who couldn't find jobs otherwise.
1:07So, it's a program that was meant to
1:09demonstrate to the American people that
1:11the federal government was now going to
1:13take up the responsibility
1:16of creating work for people that wanted
1:19it. right now.
1:23The New Deal in general and more
1:25specifically the CCC
1:28were not wholeheartedly accepted. They
1:31raised some questions that Americans of
1:34the 1930s couldn't necessarily agree on
1:39the answer for. Like for instance,
1:41people asked, "Was the CCC by creating
1:45jobs a program that would hurt the
1:48American dream by helping kill off the
1:51work ethic that Americans believed me
1:56rewarded? or was a CCC a program that
2:01would convince a new generation of young
2:04Americans that the government could
2:06provide opportunity to earn respect. A
2:10very important idea here that I want to
2:13define very quickly is this idea of
2:15meritocracy.
2:16Right? Mritocracy is a system by which
2:18people who deserve or earn opportunity
2:22get it. Americans had long liked to
2:26believe that the American economy was a
2:28pretty pure meritocracy. And it is in a
2:31lot of ways. Uh that it was a an economy
2:35uh and that Americans had a society that
2:38didn't care where people came from. They
2:41didn't care what their background was,
2:43but that if you were capable and you
2:45worked hard and you did things the right
2:47way, you would succeed in the course of
2:50life. And of course, one of the problems
2:52that of the New Deal was that this idea
2:55that you could work hard to be rewarded
2:57for it was dramatically injured. So what
3:01I'm going to argue today is that
3:04Americans of the 1930s were worried
3:07about young men who couldn't find work.
3:10So Franklin Donor Roosevelt created the
3:12CCC, which many participants used for
3:14their own individual needs. Now, let me
3:18say really quickly also in terms of
3:21context, it would be helpful if you went
3:24and double read that chapter on the
3:26Great Depression for a little extra
3:28information. So, go back to the phone or
3:30text and read over the depression
3:32chapter if you haven't done that
3:34recently.