[ Tomorrows Labor Department report will show 22 million jobs lost
last month. Unemployment is likely to hit 15 percent or higher, by far
the worst since the Great Depression. Then a Federal works program,
the Civilian Conservation Corps was created.] [[link removed]]

SHOULD AMERICA CONSIDER RESTARTING THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS IN
RESPONSE TO THE ECONOMIC CRASH?   [[link removed]]

 

AppalachianMagazine
April 3, 2020
AppalachianMagazine
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_ Tomorrow's Labor Department report will show 22 million jobs lost
last month. Unemployment is likely to hit 15 percent or higher, by far
the worst since the Great Depression. Then a Federal works program,
the Civilian Conservation Corps was created. _

CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) workers, 1935., photographer: Carl
Mydans, United States. Resettlement Administration.
(AppalachianMagazine)

 

Roughly four months ago, the world entered into a new decade and for
many Americans 2020 had all the hallmarks of being an incredible year,
economically speaking. The economy was booming, unemployment was at a
record low and businesses were thriving — we were soaring, or so
many thought. To put it lightly, many of us were oblivious of the
timeless truth we learned in elementary school: What goes up, must
come down.

Then came March and with it the fulfillment of the elementary proverb,
we came down.  Hard.

First they canceled March Madness, then they canceled schools, then
there was a run on toilet paper and at last, the economy came crashing
down faster than anything anyone who has studied American history had
ever seen.  We do not use the term “crashing down” lightly, but
soberly and in recognition of the obvious: When millions of people
stop working, the economy enters a tailspin.

In an interview with _Yahoo Finance
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KPMG’s chief economist, Constance Hunter, stated, “What is so
especially sad about this is, once workers become separated from their
employers, it makes it much harder to restart the economy,” adding,
“We have more social safety nets in place than during the Great
Depression, but this is way worse than anything we saw during the
Great Depression.”

According to most recent jobs data, over 700,000 job were lost in
early March, long before the international shutdown went into full
effect — this number is expected to rise to reveal more than 10
million Americans have since lost their jobs.

To call this a nightmare scenario would be accurate.

“Unprecedented” is a word we keep hearing over and over again in
light of everything happening, and though it is true that we have
never seen such widespread economic chaos so quickly, not too long ago
there was a generation that was thrown into the throes of poverty. 
These individuals would eventually become known as the _Greatest
Generation_ and there’s always been a lot we could learn from them
— especially now.

As we collectively seek to find answers regarding the best path
forward, perhaps we can look to the past, back to a moment in time
that saw a booming and thriving decade come to an abrupt and painful
end and was followed by years of leanness, 1929.

Three generations ago, my great-grandfather’s family was suffering
in the hells of the Great Depression.

In some areas of the nation, unemployment was near 50% and I
specifically remembering my late-great-grandfather, Papaw Tom, tell me
about how times were so dire many people in his West Virginia
community faced starvation.

Fortunately for Papaw Tom, salvation came in the form of a
revolutionary governmental program known as the Civilian Conservation
Corps (CCCs), a Federal work program that paid unskilled and
unemployed young men
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a month to serve in various work projects across the nation.  The men
were placed under supervision of the US Army and were made to learn
military discipline as they lived in camps thousands of miles from
home.

Upon hearing of this new program, my Papaw Tom, who was barely
15-years-old at the time, got in touch with a relative who worked for
the Federal Government inside the post office in Williamson, West
Virginia, and asked if there was any way he could find work in this
new program.

“We were destitute — didn’t have nothing.  If I didn’t get
accepted into the CCC’s, I don’t know what would have happened to
me or my family,” he once told me as he reminisced about what were
some of the darkest days of his life, yet his most fond to recall.

Fortunately for my grandfather, his uncle assisted in forging some
documents and enlisted him into the CCCs.  Illegal, yes.  Crooked
Mingo County politics, yes.  But these were extraordinary times and
as we all know, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Just weeks before his death in 2014, I had the opportunity to talk
with my great-grandfather about the time in his life he left West
Virginia for some mysterious place he only referred to as “Out
West” (click here to watch the video
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“There wasn’t a damned thing around here to do,” he recalled,
using the only language he knew.

Continuing, he told about how the lieutenant “_knowed_ damned well
that I wasn’t old enough to be there.”

“I said to him, ‘please don’t send me back home because there
ain’t nothing back there for me to work at.’”

To make a long story short, the fifteen-year-old boy from West
Virginia soon found himself sitting atop a Caterpillar D-8 dozer
learning valuable skills that would carry with him for the rest of his
life.

“An ole boy rode in the seat with me and taught me how to run the
thing,” my dying grandfather recalled with a twinkle in his eye.
 “It wasn’t very long at all until I had that big D-8 under
control – I could really push the dirt…. Going into the CCCs was
the best thing that ever happened to me,” he concluded.

The poor boy who left the hollers of Southern West Virginia with peach
fuzz growing on his face and absolutely no marketable skill returned
to the mountains of Appalachia as a man – a man capable of operating
any piece of construction machinery invented by man.

Following the Second World War, he went to work constructing a home
for his new family.  The lessons he learned building roads and dams
helped him as he graded the steep mountainside and dug a basement.
 The skills he picked up while building mess halls and tool rooms in
the CCCs gave him the confidence and knowledge to build a house his
great-great-granddaughters would celebrate Christmas inside.

He left a poor boy without any future, but would return with the
knowledge necessary to lead a multimillion dollar trucking business
— all with nothing more than a seventh grade education.

Not only did he benefit personally from his stint in the Civilian
Conservation Corps (he received a real-life education and was able to
send money back home to his destitute sisters), but the nation as a
whole owes a debt of gratitude to the public work relief program: Were
it not for this program, we wouldn’t have the Blue Ridge Parkway
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stone walls at the Grand Canyon National Park or the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park – the world’s most visited national park.

Perhaps even more important than the stone walkways at the Grand
Canyon are the lasting impacts the program had upon an entire
generation of young people.  The CCCs offered the training ground for
boys to become men and provided an opportunity for the nation to groom
3 million individuals for an impending world war – a war that would
determine the fate of humanity.

Fast-forward roughly three-quarters of a century and we now find
ourselves in one of the most critical moments in American, if not
world history.

What will we do in the weeks and months ahead? How will we restart an
economy that has come to a stop harder than the Great Depression? 
What does one do with 10 million unemployed people?

Perhaps even worse, what about the unfortunate high school seniors? 
Right now, the biggest sympathy they are getting is because they’re
not going to have a prom or maybe even a graduation, but our hearts
should truly break for them as they prepare to enter a workforce that
frankly doesn’t need them or even want them.

Do we encourage them to become a lifelong slave of student loan debt
— padding the pockets of university presidents and watching as their
money is used to build even more grandiose and useless buildings on
campuses across the land?

Prior to the economic catastrophe we’re on the eve of experiencing
even came to light, unskilled laborers were being forced to work 2-3
jobs just to pay rent.

Sadly, millions of young kids have been deceived into running up more
than $100,000 for what has turned out to be a useless degree —
meanwhile, plumbers and brick masons across the land are banking three
times the take home pay of many people with degrees.

Though the overwhelming majority of educators serving in our schools
are giving their job everything they have (and then a little more), we
must recognize that for many decades the structure of our education
system has failed our kids — evidence of this is the student loan
crisis that was a plague to the economy prior to March 2020.

As a child, my mother always warned me to make good grades or I’d
spend my life “digging ditches”, funny enough, the guys digging
ditches are the only people working right now and they’re making
pretty good money.

Yes. College is necessary for many jobs.  This has always been the
case and will continue to be the case; however, as we wake up in April
2020 to a new economy, a way of life, even a new America, we must also
get honest with ourselves: The old world is gone.  There will be a
new normal, though we do not yet know what that will be — we will be
creating it in the weeks and months to come.

We’re still going to need someone willing to carry a bundle of
shingles to the top of the library and patch the roof.  Shouldn’t
we be a little more concerned for the future of these people?

The dirty secret that no one wants to talk about is that our
nation’s infrastructure is aging and crumbling
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around us; we’re roughly a decade away from huge catastrophic
disasters if we don’t get to work; meanwhile an entire generation of
kids are now burdened by college debt in an economy that no longer
wants them.

In an effort to cushion our fall, the federal government has stepped
in and pledged to spend $2-trillion on a Coronavirus stimulus
package.  Two-trillion dollars, is an incomprehensible amount of
money.  It looks like this: $2,000,000,000,000.00.  If we’re ready
to pony up such an incredible amount of money to help our fall not
hurt so badly, shouldn’t we be thinking about how to pick ourselves
up after we’ve hit rock bottom?

I know of one West Virginian who lived through the last time the
economy truly crashed (make no mistake, 2008 was a hiccup, not a
crash) and if he were still alive today, he’d tell you what picked
him up out of poverty: Military training, skill training, the dignity
of earning one’s government check, and the pride that accompanies
building something like the Blue Ridge Parkway… the Civilian
Conservation Corps.

Our government has already demonstrated that the price tag is
absolutely of no concern during this crisis.  If this is the case,
shouldn’t we consider a program that will see these dollars put to
use offering real results and helping real people… for a lifetime?

Perhaps later this year, as we seek to get back on our feet, would be
the perfect time for our government to consider something
extraordinary, bringing back the Civilian Conservation Corps.

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