By Stas Margaronis
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created in 1935 and typified President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that provided jobs, economic stimulus, and upgrades to the nation’s infrastructure.
The WPA provides a positive historical model for the United States to embrace in 2020.
At a time when the United States’ infrastructure is crumbling due to lack of investment, Nick Taylor demonstrated in his book American-Made how the federal government handled the issue of job creation and infrastructure spending during the Depression.
Taylor describes how during its eight years of existence the WPA employed 8.5 million Americans at a cost of $11 billion in 1935 dollars or $206 billion in 2019 dollars resulting in the construction of:
- 650,000 miles of roads
- 78,000 bridges
- 125,000 civilian and military buildings
- 800 airports built or enlarged
- 700 miles of airport runways
The WPA also provided for:
- 900 million hot lunches to school children
- 1,500 nursey schools
- 225,000 concerts presented to 150 million people
- 475,000 works of art
- 276 full-length books[1]
As a result of the extensive rebuilding of infrastructure, the WPA provided the airports, roads, and workers including the training of aviation mechanics that helped prepare the United States for World War II.[2] This happened in spite of conservative critics and both Democratic and Republican isolationists who opposed America going to war.
A key element in the success of the program was that Roosevelt had a gifted administrator with a background in social work who had worked for Roosevelt when he was still Governor of New York.
The administrator was Harry Hopkins who had come to Washington with a vision for creating jobs by investing federal dollars. He provided Roosevelt with a blueprint for jump-starting job creation and Roosevelt supported him. The WPA benefited from Hopkins’s network of administrators that dated back to his days in New York. He brought this team to Washington to run the CWA and later the WPA.
Mixed Effectiveness of Federal Spending
Economists Robert Heilbroner and Aaron Singer write in The Economic Transformation of America: 1600 to the Present that Roosevelt’s New Deal programs did not pull the country out of the Depression, but federal spending to mobilize the economy to fight World War II did:
“Looking back, we can see that much of the stagnation was in fact caused by the belief that the New Deal was doing ‘too much.’ Frightened by the policies of an activist, anti-laissez-faire administration, the business community never gained enough confidence to bring its own spending for investment purposes up to the levels of the 1920s…Thus the New Dealers were caught in a trap. They were unable to spend enough to restore the full momentum of growth, but they were also unable to cut back their spending programs without sending the economy into a tailspin.”[3]
The two economists noted “no one knows how this dilemma of policy might have eventually been resolved” as war broke out in Europe in 1939 followed by the United States being attacked by Japan in December of 1941. The American public rallied in support of the war resulting in massive orders for the military: “All this required the expenditure of stupendous sums, and no one worried about the fact that only government could raise those sums by taxing and borrowing…Thus government spending skyrocketed – in the first six months of 1942 the government placed over $100 billion ($1.574 trillion in 2019 dollars -ed note) in contracts. GNP (Gross National Product -ed note) boomed. And unemployment quickly fell almost to zero.”[4]
Birth of the WPA
This was still in the future when in November, 1933, Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Civil Works Administration (CWA) to provide 4 million jobs over the winter of 1933-1934. Hopkins was chosen to run the program which placed 2.6 million workers in CWA jobs by December 15, 1933 and by January 15, 1934, CWA had placed 4.2 million workers in jobs. This achievement led to Hopkins appearing on the cover of Time Magazine in February of 1934.
As unemployment persisted, Roosevelt called for a “greatly enlarged” work program in his January, 1935 State of the Union Address. Subsequently, the President signed an executive order creating the work program structure with the Works Progress Administration as its operational arm. Harry Hopkins was appointed to lead the WPA.
Hopkins was the apostle of federal spending to invest in jobs, infrastructure, and a better way of life. To critics he answered a familiar question often repeated by critics of infrastructure spending today who demand: “Who’s going to pay for all that?” Hopkins answer to Americans was: “You are…. This is America the richest country in the world. We can afford to pay for anything we want. And we want a decent life for all the people in this country. And we are going to pay for it.”[5]
At the same time, Hopkins and his administrators strove to prevent politicians on the local and state level from using WPA funds for political patronage. This created tensions between WPA administrators and elected representatives who sought more control over jobs and spending.[6]
The WPA was not the only organization creating jobs and new investment. The Public Works Administration headed by Harold Ickes financed the construction of the Bay Bridge, that linked San Francisco to Oakland , the Triborough Bridge in New York, and construction of the Hoover Dam in Nevada.[7] However, the CWA required a 55% of project cost contribution from state and local agencies as opposed to a minimal contribution for WPA sponsored projects.[8]
Impact on California, Louisiana, New York, and Texas
The WPA began by supporting small projects such as in Oakland, California that included rat control, book repairs at public libraries, park and playground improvements, painting and repairs to schools and other public buildings, the construction of fire trails, concrete curbing installations, and underground conduits for police and fire alarms. These projects were labor intensive, quick to start, and improved the infrastructure in small ways.
In New York City, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had an existing corps of engineers and architects ready to build WPA financed projects that included new firehouses, police stations, public housing, and new parks. New York’s proposals were being approved at such a rate, that at one time 1/7th of the WPA funds for the entire country were going to New Work.
In Texas, WPA projects included:
* The city of Dallas proposed new roads as part of the state’s centennial celebration in 1936. The city sought four million dollars from WPA for road improvements.
* El Paso, Texas planners drew up proposals to improve one thousand county roads that included bridges, culverts, and sidewalks.
* The Texas Highway Department proposed to use WPA workers to pave the remaining sections of the highway linking El Paso to San Antonio.[9]
In November 1936, Hopkins traveled to the Louisiana capital of Baton Rouge to open an expanded Louisiana State University (LSU) football stadium. WPA workers had built an expansion of the stadium at a cost of $700,000 dollars. Total WPA spending on the LSU campus was $1.5 million in 1936 dollars (or $28.2 million in 2019 dollars).[10] Louisiana Governor Richard Leche expressed “our most heartfelt appreciation to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who made the WPA possible.”[11]
So, states from California to New York to Texas and Louisiana all benefited from new economic development and jobs provided by the WPA.
Criticisms of WPA
Conservatives in Congress became increasingly critical of the program as it expanded the role of the federal government in providing jobs and infrastructure improvements paid for by the federal government. Increased federal spending drew the ire of conservatives and business interests who feared the growing role of the federal government in driving economic growth and jobs at a time when corporations had failed to do so. Speculative investments contributed to the 1929 stock market crash and the resulting depression. The joblessness that afflicted Americans in the 1930s tarnished the image of banks and corporate America creating support for federal initiatives such as the WPA.
There were incidents where workers on WPA projects were found not working, where a rescue of WPA workers by train in the Florida Keys threated by a hurricane failed to pull out workers in time resulting in a wave swamping most of the rail cars and contributing to a total of 420 lives lost during the storm.[12] A WPA project for a cross-Florida canal had to be abandoned due to cost overruns and opposition from Congressional representatives who controlled federal spending for the navigable waterways.[13]
Another WPA project that drew the ire of critics occurred at Mount Airy, North Carolina where workers built a lake that was not sustainable for fishing because it did not to have a water source.
In Butte, Montana a WPA ice rink was built too far from a water source to freeze water into ice for the rink. In this case, WPA workers turned the rink into a softball field. [14]
Disaster Relief and the 1936 Presidential Election
In 1936, flooding from New England to the Ohio River left 171 people dead and 430,000 people homeless. The WPA had deployed almost 100,000 workers from laborers to nurses into rescue, recovery, clean-up, filling sandbags and building levees. [15]
In 1936, the Presidential election pitted the Republican Al Landon against President Roosevelt. Landon sharply criticized the federal programs Roosevelt created including the WPA. Landon also criticized the newly created Social Security system for providing unemployment benefits as “a cruel hoax”. This began the Republican attack on Social Security which also provided pensions for retirees that continue to this day. In recent years, Republicans have urged that Social Security be privatized so as to save taxpayers money. Landon’s criticisms of Roosevelt failed to convince voters, and in November, 1936 Roosevelt won reelection in a landslide.[16]
Supporting the Arts
One enduring aspect of the WPA its support for artists and the arts and especially murals that can still be seen in post offices and public buildings.
The WPA provided federal support for the arts that created jobs for artists and a short period of artistic creativity. Hopkins had argued that unemployed painters, writers, actors, and musicians were just as qualified for employment support as any other worker:
- The Federal Arts Project employed 5,000 mural, easel artists, print makers, sculptures, poster artists, and art teachers. Conservative press and politicians criticized this as a giant waste of public money. However, one example is the enduring presence of murals in post offices and other public buildings. This is a tribute to creativity and a celebration of U.S. history by its diverse contributors.[17] Another aspect of the Federal Art Project was the deployment of researchers, artists, and photographers who worked at unearthing art and artifacts showing how Americans lived from the 18th century onwards.[18]
- The WPA established the Federal Music Project and Hopkins chose Nikolai Sokoloff, the founding conductor of the Cleveland symphony to head the Federal Music Project. Sokoloff focused on supporting the classics but was criticized for not giving American Folk Music including Jazz, Country Western, and spirituals equal standing.[19]
- The Federal Writers Project created travel guides of states in the United States that not only provided information about tourism but also about state and local history. Some guides have been re-published and provide an historical document about what life was like in various states during the 1930s.[20]
- The Federal Theater Project created new plays and theater for public consumption. Under the direction of Hallie Flanagan, a former classmate of Hopkins, the Federal Theater Project produced many plays to bring theater to a broader public. One play it produced was It Can’t Happen Here, based on the best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis in which a U.S. Senator establishes a fascist dictatorship in the United States and uses a private army called the Minute Men to brutally crush dissent and civil liberties. The production was criticized as propaganda to support the 1936 re-election of President Roosevelt. On October 27, 1936 there were simultaneous openings of the play in a number of cities including New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Detroit, and Miami. The play was also translated into Yiddish and Spanish. Performances continued for five years.[21]
Conclusion
At a time when America’s roads and bridges are crumbling and the gap between rich and poor is widening, Taylor demonstrates the positive impact of federal spending to create jobs. The WPA and other New Deal programs help put the country back to work and mitigated the despair Americans endured during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Taylor shows how the WPA provided investment at a time when corporate America’s spending was insufficient. The WPA’s investment in jobs, training, roads, bridges and airports modernized the United States and prepared the nation to fight and win World War II. As Heilbroner and Sanger point out, New Deal spending for the WPA and other programs was not sufficient to pull the country out of the Depression until an even larger federal expenditure for military contracts to fight World War II created a sufficient economic boost to end the Depression.
So, the WPA and the other New Deal programs did create the foundation for U.S. economic recovery.
[1] Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA (2008) pp. 523-524
[2] Taylor, p. 453
[3] Robert Heilbroner & Aaron Singer, The Economic Transformation of America: 1600-to the Present (1977) p. 316
[4] Ibid., pp 316-317
[5] Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, p.183
[6] Taylor, p.179
[7] Taylor, p.134
[8] Taylor, p. 173
[9] Taylor, pp.186-188
[10] Taylor, p.233
[11] Taylor, p.234
[12] Taylor, p.204
[13] Taylor, p.206
[14] Taylor, p.218
[15] Taylor, p.214
[16] Taylor, pp.231-232
[17] Taylor, p.270
[18] Taylor, p.278
[19] Taylor, pp.283-290
[20] Taylor, pp 291-298
[21] Taylor pp. 303-305