Works Progress Administration

WPA graphic

Typical sign on a WPA project

The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western populations. Expenditures from 1936 to 1939 totaled nearly $7 billion. The budget at the outset of the WPA in 1935 was 1.4 billion dollars. It provided work for three million "employables" at this time, however there were an estimated 10 million unemployed persons at this time. By 1943, the total amount spent was over $11 billion.

The WPA was a national program that originated its own projects (in cooperation with state and local governments) and sometimes took over state and local relief programs that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) or FERA programs. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs. It never managed to come anywhere close to full demand for employment.

Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of high employment due to the industry boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years. Most people who needed a job were eligible for at least some of its positions. Hourly wages were typically set to the prevailing wages in each area. However workers could not be paid more than 30 hours a week. Before 1940, there was very little training to teach new skills, to meet the objections of the labor unions.

Enacting the WPA

Created by order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the WPA was funded by Congress with passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 on April 8, 1935.

The WPA was largely shaped by Harry Hopkins, close advisor to then-President Roosevelt. The WPA was initially intended to be an extension of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration work program, which funded projects runs by states and cities. Both Roosevelt and Hopkins felt that the route to economic recovery and the lessened importance of "the dole" would be in employment programs such as the WPA.

Women

Some WPA programs included adult education.

1940 Indians at Work magazine.

About 15% of the household heads on relief were women. Youth programs were operated separately by the National Youth Administration (the NYA). The average worker was about 40 years old (about the same as the average family head on relief).

The WPA was consistent with the strong belief of the time that husbands and wives should not both be working (because the second person working 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 18 percent of the cases. Only 2 percent of the husbands had private employment. "All of these [2,000] 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. Most of the women worked with sewing projects, where they were taught to use sewing machines and made clothing, bedding, and supplies for hospitals, orphanages, and adoption centers.

Relief for African Americans

The share of Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and WPA benefits for African Americans exceeded their proportion of the general population. The FERA's first relief census reported that more than two million African Americans were on relief during early 1933, a proportion of the African-American population (17.8%) that was nearly double the proportion of whites on relief (9.5%). By 1935, there were 3,500,000 African Americans (men, women and children) on relief, almost 35 percent of the African-American population; plus another 250,000 African-American adults were working on WPA projects. Altogether during 1938, about 45 percent of the nation's African-American families were either on relief or were employed by the WPA.

Civil rights leaders initially objected that African Americans were proportionally underrepresented. African American leaders made such a claim with respect to WPA hires in New Jersey: "In spite of the fact that Blacks indubitably constitute more than 20 percent of the State's unemployed, they composed 15.9% of those assigned to W.P.A. jobs during 1937." Nationwide during late 1937, 15.2% were African American.

However, by 1939, the perception of discrimination against African-Americans had changed to the point that the NAACP magazine Opportunity hailed the WPA, saying:

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.

Projects Funded

Works Progress Administration road project.

The WPA legacy includes public recreation buildings. WPA canoe house, University of Iowa campus, 1937.

WPA historic building architectural drawing, Anson Brown Building, Ann Arbor, MI

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, including the iconic Dock Street Theatre in Charleston, the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and the Timberline Lodge on Oregon's Mt. Hood; 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. One construction project was the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, the bridges of which were each designed as architecturally unique. In its eight year run, the WPA built 325 firehouses and renovated 2384 of them across the United States. The 20,000 miles of water mains, installed by their hand as well, no doubt aided in a more fire protected country.

The direct focus of the WPA projects changed with need. 1935 saw projects aimed at infrastructure improvement; roads, bringing electricity to rural areas, water conservation, sanitation and flood control. In 1936, as outlined in that year’s Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, public facilities became a focus; parks, buildings, utilities, airports, and transportation projects were funded. The following year, saw the introduction of agricultural pursuits in projects such as the production of marl fertilizer and the eradication of fungus pests. As the Second World War approached, and then eventually begun, WPA projects became increasingly defense related.

File:WPA SC.jpg

Nancy Blair, state supervisor of the South Carolina WPA Library Project, inspecting a model of a bookmobile.

One project of the WPA was funding state-level library service demonstration projects, which aimed to create new areas of library service to underserved populations and extend rural service. Another project was the Household Service Demonstration Project, which trained 30,000 women for domestic employment.

South Carolina had one of the larger state-wide library service demonstration project. At the end of the project in 1943, South Carolina had twelve publicly funded county libraries, one regional library, and a funded state library agency.

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 during January 1935 why he set the number at 3.5 million, using Federal Emergency Relief Administration data. Estimating costs at $1200 per worker per year, he asked for and received $4 billion. Many women were employed, but they were few compared to men. Many women were unemployed at this time.

Poster from 1940 summarizing WPA's achievements

In 1935 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, 13 million were not considered eligible for employment. This left a total of 7 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.

The WPA employed a maximum of 3.3 million in November 1938. Worker pay was based on three factors: the region of the country, the degree of urbanization, and the individual's skill. It varied from $19/month to $94/month. The goal was to pay the local prevailing wage, but limit the hours of work to 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week; the stated minimum being 30 hours a week, or 130 hours a month.

Criticism

The WPA had countless critics on the right. The strongest attacks were that it was the prelude for a national political machine on behalf of Roosevelt. Reformers secured the Hatch Act of 1939 that largely depoliticized the WPA.

Others complained that far Left elements played a major role, especially in the New York City unit (which was independent of the New York State unit). Representative Martin Dies Jr. went so far as to call the WPA a “seedbed for communists”. Exaggeration was rife--such as a false report circulating in 1936 that the cost of killing a single rat in one extermination endeavor was $2.97).

Much of the criticism of the distribution of projects and funding allotment is a result of the view that the decisions were politically motivated. The South, as the poorest region of the United States, received 75 percent less in federal relief and public works funds per capita than the West. Critics would point to the fact that Roosevelt’s Democrats could be sure of voting support from the South, whereas the West was less of a sure thing; investing in the West was a way of swaying voters.

The WPA hired men with the weakest work habits who could not get regular jobs. Critics ridiculed them, and the agency as a whole, as laze--calling the initials "We Poke Along", "We Piddle Around", "We Putter Along", "Working Piss Ants", or the "Whistle, Piss and Argue gang". These were sarcastic references to WPA projects that sometimes slowed down deliberately because foremen had an incentive to keep going, rather than finish a project.

Novelist John Steinbeck rejected the most common slur against WPA workers in his essay, "Primer on the '30s": “It was the fixation of businessmen that the WPA did nothing but lean on shovels. I had an uncle who was particularly irritated at shovel-leaning. When he pooh-poohed my contention that shovel-leaning was necessary, I bet him five dollars, which I didn’t have, that he couldn’t shovel sand for fifteen timed minutes without stopping. He said a man should give a good day’s work and grabbed a shovel. At the end of three minutes his face was red, at six he was staggering and before eight minutes were up his wife stopped him to save him from apoplexy. And he never mentioned shovel-leaning again.“ (Anthologized in America and Americans, 2002) Other references to the WPA in popular culture include:

• WPA Blues, a 1937 song by Casey Bill Weldon, also recorded by Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter: "Everybody's working in this town/ And it's worrying me night and day/If that means working too/ Have to work for the WPA"
• Harper Lee's 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird noted a typical comment. Bob Ewell, the resident slacker of Maycomb County, is described as "the only person fired from the WPA for laziness."

U.S. entry into World War II produced a sudden change of national needs and priorities. These WPA workers are assembling an air raid warning map for New Orleans within days of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Evolution and termination

During 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, saying their were already too many unemployed skilled workers Unemployment ended with the beginning of war production for World War II, as millions of men joined the services, and cost-plus contracts made it attractive for companies to hire men and train them. With the need gone, Congress terminated the WPA during late 1943.

See also

• Civil Works Administration
• Civilian Conservation Corps
• Employer of last resort
• Federal Project Number One
• Federal Art Project
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• Great Depression
• Hatch Act of 1939
• List of locks and dams of the Upper Mississippi River
• National Recovery Administration
• New Deal

References

• Jim Couch, "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.
• Leighninger, Robert D., Jr. Long-Range Public Investment: the Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press (2007), providing a context for American public works programs, and detailing major agencies of the New Deal: CCC, PWA, CWA, WPA, and TVA.
• Lindley, Betty Grimes & Lindley, Ernest K. 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. 900 pp. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1946. Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs
• Millett; John D. & Gladys Ogden. Administration of Federal Work Relief 1941.
• Rose, Nancy. The WPA and Public Employment in the Great Depression (2009)
• 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)
• Taylor, David A. Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2009
• Taylor, Nick. American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work (2008)
• Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1939. (Ph.D. thesis)
• Young, William H., & Nancy K. The Great Depression in America: a Cultural Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007 ISBN 0313335206

External links

• The Index of American Design at the National Gallery of Art
• Works by the Works Progress Administration at Project Gutenberg slave narratives
• Posters from the WPA at the Library of Congress
• The Work Projects Administration posters, consisting of over 900 examples of artworks, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
• Database of WPA murals
• Guide to the WPA Oregon Federal Art Project collection at the University of Oregon
• WPA inspired Gulf Coast Civic Works Project
• WPA mural projects by noted muralist Sr. Lucia Wiley
• WPA Artist Louis Schanker
• WPA Artist Robert Tabor
• An Introduction to the Employer of Last Resort Proposal from Dollars & Sense. Includes several images from the original WPA.
• Guide to the Works Progress Administration Collection on Orange County, California, 1935-1939. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
• Living New Deal Project
• Soul of a People documentary on Smithsonian Networks
• The WPA Library Project in South Carolina
• South Carolina Public Library History, 1930-1945