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“N” is for New Deal

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The New Deal was a collection of federal programs enacted between 1933 and 1939 to solve the problems created by the Great Depression. In South Carolina, the New Deal brought the three Rs: recovery for farmers, bankers, textile mill owners, and small businessmen; relief for the unemployed and destitute; and reform in labor-management relations, banking, sale of securities, and retirement. In the process, the New Deal radically increased the role of the federal government in the state’s economy. The most popular of all New Deal programs in the Palmetto State was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This program hired unemployed males between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five to do conservation work that included reforestation, fighting forest fires, and creating South Carolina’s first state parks.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.