To the editor:

Our U.S. unemployment rate is said to be 9.1 percent. I believe it is much higher because many people have given up trying for employment. Other unemployed people despair of success and never even try to get a job.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, the unemployment rate was much worse, but the federal government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt took action, Many agencies were established to provide work, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration and the National Youth Administration. Forests were planted, parks were created and improved by young men in the CCC. The members of the CCC were provided with food, clothing, shelter and medical care. They earned $25 a month; $20 of this was sent home to needy families, and they had $5 a month to spend on liberty in town. In the Great Depression, $5 bought a lot.

I was a student going to college and had a part-time job under the NYA. I retyped a history professor’s manuscript for a book.

Let’s have another New Deal.