This is not how previous generations of leaders responded to the crisis of male unemployment. Just two months after his inauguration in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt presented Congress with a response to the unprecedented joblessness of the Great Depression. Roosevelt proposed a government employment program for unmarried young men called the Civilian Conservation Corps. Its workforce would not compete with established industries, FDR promised, but would instead confine itself “to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control and similar projects.” The work of the CCC was designed to be
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