Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a key agency established in 1935 as part of the U.S. government's response to the high unemployment rates during the Great Depression. It aimed to provide jobs for millions of Americans struggling due to economic hardship, employing approximately 8 million individuals between its inception and closure in 1943. The WPA undertook a vast array of projects, including the construction of roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals, while also supporting initiatives in the arts.
One notable aspect of the WPA was its emphasis on labor-intensive techniques, which resulted in distinctive architectural styles that have drawn mixed reviews over the years. The agency's operations were largely managed at the local level, with federal oversight, and funding was contingent on local governments providing matching funds. Despite its significant contributions to infrastructure and community resources, the WPA faced criticism for perceived inefficiencies and accusations of political bias in funding allocation.
The agency's legacy includes not only physical improvements and public works but also a wealth of archival materials that provide insights into American culture and history. Overall, the WPA played a crucial role in helping Americans endure the Great Depression, although debates continue regarding its long-term economic impact.
Works Progress Administration
Identification Federal government relief program
Date Established on April 8, 1935
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest federal Depression-era relief agency, employing a peak of 3.3 million American workers in 1938. Employees worked predominantly on infrastructure construction but also in conservation, disaster relief, education, the arts, and community service. The administration allowed millions of families to retain their dignity while surviving and left an enduring legacy of public works, art, and archival materials; however, it largely failed to revive the economy as a whole.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in January of 1933, about a quarter of the American workforce—upward of thirteen million people—was unemployed. There was an urgent need for immediate relief, and the federal government responded with the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Title I of NIRA dealt with regulation of industry and labor markets, while Title II established the Public Works Administration (PWA), authorizing $3.3 billion to hire unemployed workers for construction projects. The Supreme Court declared Title I unconstitutional in 1935.
The PWA merged with the WPA, which was authorized as an administrative agency under the Federal Relief Appropriations Act in 1935. The aims and functions of the PWA and its successor the WPA were similar, but the WPA was broader in scope. The number of people employed by the WPA rose to 2.3 million in 1936, declined to 1.5 million during a short-lived economic recovery in 1937, rose to 3.3 million in 1938, and then declined steadily thereafter. Altogether, the agency provided almost 8 million jobs between 1935 and 1943. After war broke out in Europe in 1939, most WPA projects focused on military preparedness. The agency closed in 1943.
Scope and Projects of the WPA
Out of total expenditures of $11.4 billion between 1935 and 1941, road building accounted for $4 billion, public buildings for $1 billion, public utility construction for $1 billion, and welfare projects for $1 billion. Altogether, the WPA was responsible for twenty-nine thousand bridges, 4,383 schools, and 130 hospitals, as well as numerous stadiums, libraries, and other public buildings. WPA workers provided emergency disaster relief during floods and hurricanes.
Federal One, the controversial WPA program for supporting the arts, consumed less than 1 percent of the total budget. The remaining projects were extremely diverse. A New Orleans archival Web site, for example, lists several academic archaeological studies, a community orchestra, harmonica lessons for inhabitants of a home for incurables, experimental treatment for malaria sufferers, a household-aide training center, the building and operating of the New Orleans public library, operation of a used-clothing depot, and a project that paid 144 black workers, mostly women, to refurbish and rebind twenty-five thousand books.
Among the most notable WPA public works were the Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge in New York and Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. Many federal, state, and local government projects that were not initially conceived for their work-generating function ended up using laborers on the WPA payroll at some time during the 1930’s.
Because providing work was of paramount importance, WPA construction projects emphasized labor-intensive techniques, downplaying mechanization and incorporating details requiring many man-hours to create a distinctive ornate Art Deco style. This aesthetic had many detractors during the later twentieth century, but those examples still intact have been deemed worthy of restoration.
Other WPA efforts paid a small army of photographers and stenographers to record folklore, genealogy, and local history from individuals who were elderly and often illiterate. A series of interviews with former slaves provides a vivid perspective that otherwise would have died. Thanks to the ease of electronic publication, this huge body of unique archival material, much of it left in manuscript form when the WPA folded in 1943, is gradually coming to light.
How the WPA Operated
The federal government oversaw some WPA projects directly, but in a majority of cases state and local governments conceived the projects and then applied to the federal government to supply the workers. Workers applied to, and received their paychecks from, the WPA office in the community. To obtain WPA funding the local government needed to provide matching funds, between 10 and 30 percent. The matching formula varied from state to state and did not necessarily track community need. One common complaint was that communities with the highest unemployment rates and worst poverty were bypassed because they were unable to raise matching funds.
Only one member of a household could be on the WPA payroll at a time, which limited women’s participation in the program to mostly female heads of household. Pay varied with skill and region of the country and was supposed to be comparable to pay in similar private employment. Except in emergencies, hours were limited to thirty per week. Most of the work was unskilled or semiskilled, and substantial vocational training was generally not provided. Most large families needed direct relief in addition to work with the WPA.
In the South, where segregation was the rule, WPA projects were also segregated, with African Americans relegated to more menial jobs at lower wages. Greater equality prevailed in the North; however, the areas that were the greatest beneficiaries of WPA money per capita tended to have low proportions of African American residents. Overall, the program fostered greater racial equality, but the effect was hardly dramatic.
Criticism and Controversy
The WPA had many critics during its years of operation and continues to have them. The wide scope of the program led to inclusion of projects whose usefulness the average person justifiably questioned. Although these consumed but a small fraction of the budget, they were an obvious target. The word “boondoggle,” originally denoting a Boy Scout neckerchief slide, entered the American vocabulary as a derisive term for WPA make-work. There was a popular perception that WPA workers had no incentive to be productive and were in general a lazy lot.
People accused Roosevelt of allocating WPA funds according to a political agenda rather than according to the needs of unemployed Americans, rewarding states whose voters and representatives unquestioningly supported the New Deal in all its aspects. Agricultural workers in the South, whose dire poverty is everywhere evident in documentaries of the period, experienced little relief from the WPA or any other government program. Those in the most stricken areas had to relocate, because exhausted and bankrupt municipalities had no resources to attract federal funds. Subsequent analysis of budget allocation, voting patterns, and political correspondence tends to confirm the accusation of political bias.
Some commentators maintain that the WPA actually impeded recovery by siphoning off in taxes money that otherwise would have gone into private job creation. They point to the short-lived recovery in 1937 and the rapid decline once WPA job funding was curtailed in support of their view. To the extent that WPA wages and working conditions exceeded what a local employer could provide and still remain solvent, the program may have suppressed job creation.
Impact
The WPA played a major role in allowing millions of Americans to weather the worst years of the Depression. Although the fiscally unimportant theater and art projects often promoted leftist views, for most workers, earning a steady government paycheck helped curb a tendency toward political extremism and civil unrest.
The roads, public buildings, and infrastructure improvements constructed by the WPA served the public well. Many are still in use, although most have required expansion and upgrading. Archival materials provide folklorists, historians, and anthropologists with a treasure trove that otherwise would have been lost. Much of the art, literary and visual, produced under the auspices of the WPA has enduring value, and a number of well-known figures started their careers through this avenue. The extent to which the WPA contributed to economic recovery is debatable, as there was no lasting revival of the civilian economy before the war.
Bibliography
Folsom, Burton W. New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008. Controversial view with a twenty-first century political agenda; treats the WPA, but emphasis is on Social Security and labor legislation.
Leighninger, Robert D. Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. Scholarly with emphasis on the twenty-first century impact of projects started under the WPA.
Powell, Jim. FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. New York: Crown Forum, 2003. Conservative view arguing that the WPA discriminated in allocating funds and failed to stimulate the economy.
Taylor, David A. Soul of a People: The WPA Writer’s Project Uncovers Depression America. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Describes the work of individual writers, making the book vivid and personal; some overview material.
Taylor, Nick. American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA—When FDR Put the Nation to Work. New York: Bantam, 2008. Thorough, objective history of the various WPA programs.