American Experience continues to fascinate. In the episode on FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, interviewees attempt to put CCC into historical context:
- Created 3 million well-paid jobs during the Great Depression's record unemployment.
- Educated 3 million men in everything from trades to basic literacy.
- Created, or made radically more accessible, many state and federal parks.
- Revived fallow farmlands, or turned them to pasture. Injected money into the economies of towns all over the country.
- Moved families off soup lines by requiring that $25 of workers' $30 monthly salary automatically be sent home to the families.
The most intriguing suggestion was that CCC's existence facilitated U.S. rapid mobilization for WWII because that was such a substantial pool of trained, disciplined young men to draw upon.