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38% had not gone through grammar school; only 11% had finished high school. In age, 59.47% were 17 or 18. Nine per cent were Negroes segregated in their own camps (as are veterans; Indians usually work in reservation groups, live at home). Application for CCC jobs are cleared by local relief agencies through the U. S. Labor and War Departments. CCC juniors report, on acceptance, at an Army recruiting station, usually go directly to CCCamps, where they find a Reserve lieutenant or captain in command. There they begin group life in uniform. But they find no guardhouse, no drill, no saluting, no punishments that an Army private would respect. CCC scamps may be confined to camp for a few days if a reprimand doesn't work. Worst that can happen is dishonorable discharge, meaning principally that an offender loses his accrued cash allowances. In the main, discipline is a matter of persuasion and good administrative sense on a C. O.'s part—good training for officers used to rule the easy way by command alone. Aside from a wise C. O., best bolster to CCC morale is promotion: a company of 200 may include twelve group leaders, 18 assistants from the ranks. Topnotchers may win salaried jobs as assistant technicians.
Cash pay for CCC bucks is $30 a month. Those with dependents must sign over $22 to $25 to the home folks; others must deposit $22 to $25 with the War Department Finance Officer, to be drawn when they leave. CCC figures that $102,400,000 paid enrollees in fiscal 1938 helped 1,365,000 otherwise indigent persons (an average of four dependents per man in CCC).
To earn their money CCCers must turn out for reveille at 6 a.m., don blue denim work caps, blouses and trousers. A typical day's schedule from then on: breakfast, 6:20; sick call, 7; inspection, 7:15; to work at 7:30, off an hour for lunch, off work at 4 p.m.; mail at 4:30; change to Army issue olive drab or khaki for formation and "dress inspection" (instituted a year ago to spruce up the corps) at 5 p.m. Last fortnight Franklin Roosevelt authorized a new forest green uniform, to be issued next fall—when the corps may be not only distinctive but permanent.
After dinner at 5:30 comes CCC's fun and education. Until taps at 10 p.m., four in ten CCCers take vocational instruction in everything from Diesel engine operation to drawing; three in ten study mathematics and other academic subjects. They also have organized sports, camp papers and CCC's weekly Happy Days, published in Washington, as well as other recreations common to young men who distinctly are neither uniformed angels nor devils.
On Saturdays and Sundays, they may go home or go to town to blow what's left of their $5 to $8 monthly spending money. CCCers over the past five years have contracted venereal disease at the rate of 18.3 per 1,000. Last year the rate dropped to 12.9 per thousand, as compared with the Army's 87 per 1,000 in the World War, 140 in the Spanish American War, 90 in the Civil War.
CCC insists (and camp appearances bear out) that morale has risen immensely since the first days, when depression-sore enrollees refused by the thousands to take the CCC oath of allegiance, demolished a mess hall and destroyed trees at Camp Dix, N. J. But the rate of desertions is still high: 48,483 in fiscal 1938; 1,741 last December.