Civilian Conservation Corps Uniform Cap

Uniform Cap from the Civilian Conservation Corps. Wool, or wool-blend. Green. Collected 2009, c.e.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the unemployment rate was approaching 25%. FDR's New Deal included public works employment for transients, older workers, and other specific groups. The CCC's focus on young men answered mounting concern about the numbers who were leaving their Depression-wracked homes to ride the rails.

The young men of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were issued this military-style cap.  The CCC "Overseas Cap" ill-suited the Corps' actual work, mostly forestry and conservation.  But it must have pleased the underemployed Army officers who (very successfully) ran the CCC camps, to see their charges mustered in formation with an agreeably military appearance.

In form, the CCC, begun in 1933, was not unlike the Nazis' "Reichsarbeitsdienst" (Reich Labor Service), which also gave young men healthy outdoor work.  But the organizations' political purposes differed.  The RAD mobilized all fit youth in a corvée of state labor while socializing them for future military service, likewise compulsory. 

The CCC was purely voluntary, as was U.S. military service until the 1940 draft.  CCC volunteers were paid $30 per month of which they were required to allot about $25 to their often indigent families.

America's model for government direct hiring of unemployed youth has changed since the CCC's days.  Today's programs, such as AmeriCorps, have no camps in the woods and pay their volunteers mostly with, in effect, college vouchers.  Even so, the CCC model of isolated work camps and military-style discipline still appeals to liberals and conservatives alike.  Indeed, such camps still exist, but young people must commit a crime to be admitted. – Peter Cachion