Within weeks of receiving a presidential message from Franklin Roosevelt concerning relief of unemployment, Congress passed this emergency act authorizing a Civilian Conservation Corps. The act provided for housing, meals, medical care, education and payment to citizens who would work on public projects conserving forests, rivers, parks and reservation lands.

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…for the purpose of relieving the acute condition of widespread distress and unemployment now existing in the United States, and in order to provide for the restoration of the country’s depleted natural resources and the advancement of an orderly program of useful public works…

Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration