The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-07-23

labor camps.
A whole network of fore
built or projected with the
single aim of embracing all
sections of the toiling youth. Al
ready, more than 100000 youth have
served six months in the first
Civilian Conservation Corps enlist
ment. The second c. C. c. enlist
ment claimed $751; 900 youth. Re
Gently. Roosevelt signed bill au-
thorizing the addition of $4,000 new
c. G. G. recruits under the guise o.
drought relief. Thus, a total of
close to half a million are at pres
ent in the CCC. camps with every
indication that before the year is
up the announced War Department
goal of 100000 youth in the C. C.
c. camps will have been achieved.
In addition to the 425, 1000 in the
c. c. G. camps there are almost
half as many additional in the
transient camps scattered through
out the county. These transient
camps, concentrated in the agra
rian areas Of the West Coast and
the South, differ not one whit in
principle from the c. c. c. camps.
The G. G. G. camps claim the youth
from the relief lists in the cities.
The transient camps claim the
youth who are not anchored to
homes and families, the homeless
youth caught riding freights or
hitch-hiking.
Extending the network of forced
labor organizations into the ranks
of the unemployed girls, the gov
eminent has already begun the
work Of establishing % camps for
girls in 20 different states. These
girls camps are financed Jointly
by state and federal funds through
the Public Works Administration.
Nation Wide Forced Labor Plan
With this as a beginning, the
Roosevelt government is toying with
the idea of establishing a nation
wide compulsory system of forced
labor RECOMMENDATION for all youth
regardless of whether or not they
are at present unemployed. This
plan, projected at a recent Wash
ington Conference attained by 300
leaders of bourgeois youth organ
izations called by the United States
Department of Education, provides
for one year Of compulsory public
service" in a forced labor camp
upon the completion of minimum
Of schooling. This year of compul-
sorry militarized forced labor is to
be prepared by fundamental
change in the character of bour-
geois educational methods whereby
schoolroom study is to be supple
mented" by organized labor groups
of school children who will be util-
lied to perform tasks now paid for,
such as truck gardening, library
service, industrialized agricultural
work DERRY picking, work on sea-
sonal crops, etc.
This plan of the Roosevelt gov
eminent varies only specifically
from the compulsory arbeitsdienst of
the German fascists. In all other
respects it is the bodily importa-
ton and adaptation to American
conditions of Hitler's system OF
militarized forced labor for the
youth on a national scale.
The aims of the government in
establishing this forced labor sys-
tenn are:
II To drain artificialiy the
labor market and depress labor
standards by setting government
precedents for wages OF 81 a day
or lower.
p To remove the youth from
the revoIutionizing influence CT
large and compact working class
groups in the cities.
81 To centralize its control
over the activities and thoughts
of the youth SO as more effec-
lively to instill patriotic and ma
tIonaiIst propaganda.
A. To build up a fascist re-
serve for use against the struggles
of the workers and farmers.
s. To create a previously or
ganized and mobile group of
youth capable of being immedi-
atcly brought into military op-
Grafton at the outbreak of war.
The tremendous dissatisfaction of
the youth in the camps has been
given expression in numberless
strikes, spontaneous denonstra-
tons, desertions and actual strug-
giles in which the military authori-
ties with drawn guns declared whole
camps under martial law.
The characteristic feature of these
struggles has been their spontanc-
ity, their unorganized character, the
resulting elimination of all militant
youth from the camps, and the at
tempt of the government to offset
a growing urge for inner camp or
ganization by the creation of a gov
eminent controlled Forest Legion"
calculated to play the same role in
the camps as the company union
plays in the shop.