Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration (later Works Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created in May 1935 by Presidential order (Congress funded it annually but did not set it up). It was the largest and most comprehensive New Deal agency. It continued and expanded the FERA relief programs begun under Herbert Hoover and continued under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Headed by Harry L. Hopkins, it was a "make work" program that provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression. WPA projects primarily (90%) employed unskilled blue-collar workers in construction projects across the nation, but also employed some white-collar artists, musicians, and writers on smaller-scale projects, and even ran a circus. See Federal Writers' Project

Worker profiles

The target recipients were household heads on relief (about 15% of whom were women). Youth programs were operated separately by the National Youth Administration, or NYA. The average worker was about 40 years old (about the same as the average family head on relief). The WPA reflected the strongly held belief at the time that husbands and wives should not both be working (because they would take one job away from a breadwinner.) A study of 2,000 women workers in Philadelphia showed that 90% were married, but wives were reported as living with their husbands in only 15 per cent of the cases. Only 2 per cent of the husbands had private employment. "All of these women," it was reported, "were responsible for from one to five additional people in the household." In rural Missouri 60% of the WPA-employed women were without husbands (12% were single; 25% widowed; and 23% divorced, separated or deserted.) Thus only 40% were married and living with their husbands, but 59% of the husbands were permanently disabled, 17% were temporarily disabled, 13% were too old to work, and the remaining 10% were either unemployed or handicapped. An average five years had elapsed since the husband's last employment at his regular occupation. [Howard 283 Most of the women worked in sewing projects, where they were taught to use sewing machines and made clothing, bedding and supplies for hospitals and orphanages.

Employment

The goal of the WPA was to employ most of the unemployed people on relief until the economy recovered. Harry Hopkins testified to Congress in January 1935 why he set the number at 3.5 million, using FERA data. At $1200 per worker per year he asked for and received $4 billion.

"On January 1 there were 20 million persons on relief in the United States. Of these, 8.3 million were children under sixteen years of age; 3.8 million were persons who, though between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five were not working nor seeking work. These included housewives, students in school, and incapacitated persons. Another 750,000 were persons sixty- five years of age or over. Thus, of the total of 20 million persons then receiving relief, 12.85 million were not considered eligible for employment. This left a total of 7.15 million presumably employable persons between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five inclusive. Of these, however, 1.65 million were said to be farm operators or persons who had some non-relief employment, while another 350,000 were, despite the fact that they were already employed or seeking work, considered incapacitated. Deducting this two million from the total of 7.15 million, there remained 5.15 million persons sixteen to sixty-five years of age, unemployed, looking for work, and able to work. Because of the assumption that only one worker per family would be permitted to work under the proposed program, this total of 5.15 million was further reduced by 1.6 million--the estimated number of workers who were members of families which included two or more employable persons. Thus, there remained a net total of 3.55 million workers in as many households for whom jobs were to be provided." p 562, paraphrasing Hopkins

About 75 percent of WPA employment and 75 percent of WPA expenditures went to public facilities such as highways, streets, public buildings, airports, utilities, small dams, sewers, parks, libraries, and recreational fields. The WPA built 650,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 buildings, and seven hundred miles of airport runways. Seven percent of the budget was allocated to arts projects, presenting 225,000 concerts to audiences totaling 150 million, and producing almost 475,000 artworks.Nick Taylor

Total expenditures on WPA projects through June, 1941, totaled approximately $11.4 billion. Over $4 billion was spent on highway, road, and street projects; more than $1 billion on public buildings; more than $1 billion on publicly owned or operated utilities; and another $1 billion on welfare projects including sewing projects for women, the distribution of surplus commodities and school lunch projects. 129

The WPA had numerous critics who said that political considerations helped decide which states received the most funding. Civil rights leaders often complained that African American were proportionally underrepresented. In New Jersey, they argued, "In spite of the fact that Negroes indubitably constitute more than 20 per cent of the State's unemployed, they composed 15.9 per cent of those assigned to W.P.A. jobs during 1937." 287 Nationwide in late 1937, 15.2% were African American. The NAACP magazine Opportunity hailed the WPA: 1939, p. 34. in Howard 295

It is to the eternal credit of the administrative officers of the WPA that discrimination on various projects because of race has been kept to a minimum and that in almost every community Negroes have been given a chance to participate in the work program. In the South, as might have been expected, this participation has been limited, and differential wages on the basis of race have been more or less effectively established; but in the northern communities, particularly in the urban centers, the Negro has been afforded his first real opportunity for employment in white-collar occupations

In 1940 the WPA changed policy and began vocational educational training of the unemployed to make them available for factory jobs. Previously labor unions had vetoed any proposal to provide new skills. When unemployment disappeared in World War II, and almost no one was eligible, Congress shut down the WPA in late 1943.

Projects

Trivia

Some who experienced work in the WPA have been known to refer to it as "We Poke Along," "We Piddle Along" or "We Putter Around." This is a reference to WPA projects that sometimes slowed to a crawl, because foremen had no incentive to speed up workers. This criticism was, in part, because when the WPA began, payments were based on a "security wage", ensuring workers' wages even if the project was delayed or incomplete.

A typical joke was repeated in Harper Lee's 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Bob Ewell, the resident slacker of Maycomb county, is described as "the only person fired from the WPA for laziness."

References

Notes

Scholarly studies

Jim Crouch, "The Works Progress Administration" Eh.Net Encyclopedia (2004)
Hopkins, June. "The Road Not Taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief" Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, (1999)
Howard; Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943), detailed analysis of all major WPA programs.
Lindley, Betty Grimes and Ernest K. Lindley. A New Deal for Youth: The Story of the National Youth Administration (1938)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987)
Meriam; Lewis. Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution. 1946. Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages
Millett; John D. and Gladys Ogden. Administration of Federal Work Relief 1941.
Rose, Nancy E. Put to Work (Monthly Review Press, June 1994, ISBN 0853458715)
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000)
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Williams; Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief 1939.

External links

slave narratives
Posters from the WPA at the Library of Congress
Database of WPA murals

Works Progress Administration | Defunct agencies of the United States government | History of the United States government | New Deal agencies