“Building Better Men”

Abstract

In its nine-year existence, the Civilian Conservation Corps employed over 2.9 million young, unmarried men on a variety of conservation projects. Along with providing relief, the CCC, its supporters claimed, could literally “re-build” America's young working-class men, who many thought had become demoralized—emasculated, even—by the effects of the Great Depression. Through a program consisting of heavy manual labor, vocational and technological training, civic and political education, and an intensely homosocial living and working environment, the CCC sought to produce an economically independent, responsible, and above all, “manly” male working class. This paper examines the changing image of manliness publicized by the CCC, highlighting the shift from the athletic manual laborer of the early 1930s to the highly trained citizen-soldier of the immediate pre-World War II period. It then links this changing ideal of manhood to larger socio-economic, political, and cultural changes influencing American society in the inter-war period.

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