How did the CCC help Watson improve his life?
The CCC provided jobs for more than 2 million young men. Based on this account, what impact do you think the CCC had on the nation in the 1930s?
Portions of the document below have been omitted for the purposes of this task. As you analyze the document, consider both the source of the document and the author's point of view.
Letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt from Minnie A. Hardin of Indianapolis, Indiana, December 14, 1937:
We have always had a shiftless, never-do-well class of people whose one and only aim in life is to live without work. . . . We cannot help those who will not try to help themselves and if they do try, a square deal is all they need, and by the way that is all this country needs or ever has needed: a square deal for all and then, let each paddle their own canoe, or sink.
There has never been any necessity for any one who is able to work, being on relief in this locality, but there have been many eating the bread of charity and they have lived better than ever before. . . .
During the worst of the depression many of the farmers had to deny their families butter, eggs, meat, etc. and sell it to pay their taxes and then had to stand by and see the dead-beats carry it home to their families by the arm load, and they knew their tax money was helping pay for it. . . . The crookedness, selfishness, greed and graft of the crooked politicians is making one gigantic racket out of the new deal, and it is making this a nation of deadbeats and beggars and if it continues the people who will work will soon be nothing but slaves for the pampered poverty rats and I am afraid these human parasites [people clinging to others for their own advantage] are going to become a menace to the country unless they are disenfranchised [denied the right to vote]. No one should have the right to vote theirself a living at the expense of the taxpayers.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers