Venerated by liberals and progressives to this day, at the time the Civilian Conservation Corp received a withering criticism from the Left for being a proto-fascist vehicle to militarize potentially rebellious youth. Lerner, here Youth Director of the American League Against War and Fascism, would become the decades-long editor of the United Electrical Workers journal, dying in 2003.

‘Soldiers in the Woods’ by James Lerner from The Fight Against War and Fascism. Vol. 2 No. 3. January, 1935.

HOMELESS YOUTH, American bespirizorni, close to a million young fellows and girls wandering over the land without hope, drifting to crime and degeneracy. Two years ago the press was full of such phrases. Books and movies on homeless youth became the vogue. Then came Roosevelt and Mrs. Perkins with the New Deal. As they began solving the problems confronting the bankers and industrialists they held forth a promise of employing the jobless youth and wiping out America’s new curse of idle wandering youth.

Over three hundred thousand young fellows were collected. But instead of the homeless youths, boys were gotten from families which were on relief. Relief was cut off, and the boy forced into the camp to work for a dollar a day was to help support his now reliefless family. Although the homeless youth still wandered on the highways or rode on freights, talk of the homeless youth disappeared.

The press instead sang of the virtues of Roosevelt’s forced camps for the boys. What could be more glorious than taking youths who had never seen the beauties of their country into the forests! Trees and forests were strange to many of them. Unknown to them the ecstasies of camp life! The press elaborated on this song purred into its ear by the government propaganda machine. In the same press appeared notices that Hitler was also introducing forced labor camps for the unemployed, particularly youth. Similar camps had been set up in Fascist Italy. Even members of the League of Nations admitted that these camps were preliminary steps towards outright militarization. But in America, such camps were related only to relief, to preserving forests and to placing homeless youth amidst idyllic beauty. So the press sang into the ears of the American people.

A year ago only two factors revealed the military nature of the camps. One was the fact that hundreds of military officers had been put into the camps as leaders of the boys. Secondly, that Assistant Secretary of War Woodring wrote that the camp mobilization “was the first real test of the army’s plans for war mobilization.” (Liberty, January, 1934.)

Forests Into Barracks

But like other Roosevelt proposals, the forced youth camps shake off the attractive sugar coating and the original purpose to the surface. The camps already established, youth forced into them, a vicious campaign is being waged to turn the camps into outright military barrack.

During the past two months the Daily News of New York, sister paper of the reactionary Chicago Tribune, and having the largest newspaper circulation in America, has been setting the pace in this drive. Editorial and cartoons persistently expound outright militarization. Here is a typical example of its editorial propaganda:

“We now have about 300,000 young men in the CCC. It is a military organization, except that it has no guns—and all normal: boys and young men like guns.

“Let’s give the CCC boys guns, and let them learn how to shoot the guns and to take care of them. And let’s list all of these men in the reserves.”

That’s talking cold turkey. Two million readers got this and are still getting it.

Happy Days

Is the Daily News merely expressing its own will? Let us see what the more official organs say. Happy Days, the official paper issued by the CCC organization of the boys, recently stated in an editorial:

“Everyone knows the value of military training, and who, recipient of Army discipline, should appreciate it more than the average CCC member.

“An inability to secure employment conduces to an unruliness, a feeling of unrest, that prevalent among the majority, gradually pervades the entire company. No training can possibly be of more advantage to the reforestation men than military training.”

In other words army discipline exists in the camps at present. The editorial intimates that the boys in the camps object to this. But it also reveals that the intent is to spread militarism and to force the boys to accept it. Conditions in most of these camps, bad food, oppressive rule, frequent accidents due to faulty labor conditions result in protests, strikes and mass desertions. Only a few weeks ago we read of a major outbreak in Worcester, Mass. Boys from New England were ordered transferred South. In doing this, the government follows the old military tactic of never leaving recruited men in their home territory. It is always best to forestall fraternization with the civilian population by putting the men in strange places. The boys refused to go. For several hours the train was unable to budge because the air brakes had been disconnected. Officers were beaten up. The next day the Worcester papers called for stricter military discipline to crush protests.

The military organ, Army and Navy Register, stated on October 20:

“The maintenance of CCC Camps under Army discipline and instruction of these youths in the rudiments of that discipline would serve to put a backbone in the national defense program.

“The next Congress can take great steps of lasting benefit to the youth of the nation. It can order army discipline and army training for one or two hours a day instituted at all CCC camps.”

The machinery for such action already exists. Not only are army officers the heads of the camps, but as the official handbook for camp education advisers states: “Responsibility for the carrying out of the educational reports is vested in the corps area commanders. They will report directly to the War Department.”

Here then is the whole unvarnished truth. In order to forestall mass protest, to avoid protests from foreign powers, the Roosevelt government gave the camps an innocent appearance. The program of the American League Youth Section warned of the potential danger. The danger now faces us squarely. Happy Days boldly and clearly pushes the plot against American youth, stating:

“If the CCC has proved so beneficial in the case of 300,000 young men, why not make it permanent and extend it to include the whole youth of the nation? Why not make it compulsory for every able-bodied boy, upon reaching the age of 18 or upon graduation from high school to serve one year in a CCC camp?”

For a Free Youth

Today there is a bill in Congress which if passed would make the camps permanent. In answer to this vicious militarist stunt aimed obviously at the goal of universal military conscription the Youth Section of the American League has launched a counter-drive. Petitions demanding the withdrawal of the army officers, and secondly substitution as soon as possible of unemployment insurance for all youth, or jobs at regular wages are being circulated. We expect to take at least 100,000 signatures of American youth to Washington in January. We want to arouse the anti-War forces of America to a danger which is developing under our very eyes.

Hidden in the forests of Roosevelt’s camps lurks War. A militarized youth is to be the mainstay of this War.

FIGHT Against War and Fascism was the monthly newspaper of the broad-based, but Communist-inspired, American League Against War and Fascism formed in 1933 as Nazism came to power in Germany. The paper and the League attracted fairly wide support and hosted many events in the 1930s. In 1937, reflecting the Popular Front turn, the name of the group was changed to the American League for Peace and Democracy and the journal to The Fight for Peace and Democracy. Both the paper and the organization closed in the wake of 1939’s Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/fight/v2n03-jan-1935-fight.pdf