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Chapter 9

President Roosevelt and the WPAIntroduction

In 1932, President Roosevelt promised a “New Deal” to the American people. At the time, he thought he would establish some kind of program to help the unemployed, but he had no specific ideas in mind. Roosevelt tried many different plans to help the millions of unemployed Americans without being accused of wasting billions of dollars on useless projects. The most successful, the most criticized, and by far the largest was the Works Progress Administration. (WPA). During the eight years of its existence, the WPA spent more than 11 billion dollars, hired more than 8 million workers, and helped about 30 million people—about one-fourth of the nation. Altogether, WPA workers completed more than 250,000 different projects.

The charge most frequently leveled against the WPA was that it wasted taxpayers’ money by paying lazy people to loaf on useless projects dreamed up by some nameless government official. The word “boondoggling” was coined to describe these kinds of tasks. Critics believed that private industry could do the work far more efficiently and not cost people who worked for a living any of their hard-earned dollars.

The major part of this chapter examines the charge of WPA inefficiency. Careful consideration of this criticism can be helpful even today because Uncle Sam still gets called upon to provide work for unemployed men and women and to perform any number of useful services.

The Civilian Conservation Corps

Assume you are between 17 and 25 years of age; male; Caucasian, African American, or Native American; and living in a family with an unemployed breadwinner. There are no employment opportunities in your neighborhood, but you are not eager to

join the 200,000 teenagers who have left home seeking work or just to get away; also, there is no money to pay for college tuition. What do President Roosevelt and the New Deal have to offer you?

The answer to this question was the Civilian Conservation Corps. Established in April 1933, the CCC paid volunteers $30 (450 in today’s dollars) a month, and sent most of that money home to help the CCC workers in Oregon

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volunteer’s families. Recruits would work five eight hour days each week, blazing and marking trails in national and state parks, planting trees, constructing bridges and shelters, or doing other useful public service. Most slept in barracks far from towns or cities, all received three square meals a day and most could attend classes in the evenings. Their camps were run by army officers; volunteers signed up for six-month stints, and many reenlisted. A total of three million youths served in the CCC, which was disbanded in 1942. This popular program left a legacy of enthusiastic participants who did important work fighting, in the words of one recruit, “Old Man Depression.”

From FERA to CWA

Harry Hopkins combined the toughness of a professional gambler with a social worker’s concern for people. His detailed knowledge of his field and his rough manner won him Roosevelt’s respect. In May 1933, the president appointed Hopkins to head the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Hopkins’s agency was given $500 million to spend on food, clothing, cash, and medical care for 4 million people. Working with local and

state agencies, Hopkins began spending money immediately.

Meanwhile, Congress, worried about wasting money, established another agency, the Public Works Administration. The PWA was authorized to build such useful projects as dams, highways, and bridges. To head the PWA, Roosevelt chose the honest and self-righteous Harold Ickes, who some claimed personally checked into every penny his department spent.

In 1933, Hopkins’s FERA was distributing aid and Ickes was carefully examining plans for each PWA project. However, more than 13 million Americans still faced a jobless winter. In response to protest marches of the unemployed, Congress created yet another agency, the Civilian Works Administration. Roosevelt transferred Hopkins to the CWA, where he started to spend money during his first day in office. The CWA’s purpose was to provide work, and Hopkins had four million people on the payroll by January 1934. To keep people working, some employees were required to dig ditches deeper than necessary; others were paid to refill the ditches. Meanwhile some workers broke rocks with sledgehammers even though machines were available to do the same job. Nevertheless, Hopkins succeeded in getting millions of people through the winter by paying workers a total of $1 billion. Meanwhile, CWA workers built or repaired more than 255 thousand miles of roads—one-third of the CWA’s accomplishments. Despite these successes, Congress shut down the CWA in the spring of 1934. Congressmen hoped that CWA workers would find jobs with private industries, but few could. As a

Harry Hopkins

The Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington—a PWA project

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result, Roosevelt came up with a more permanent program to care for the unemployed.

The Works Project Administration is Born

On January 5, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress for what was then a huge sum of money—nearly $5 billion—to help the unemployed, including those unable to work because of physical handicaps or age.

Congressional leaders initially frowned upon Roosevelt’s request. Conservatives shouted that $5 billion was just “too damn expensive,” that it would be spent paying people to lean on their shovels in half-hearted efforts to perform meaningless tasks at taxpayers’ expense. They complained that it was not the job of the federal government to find work for every person too lazy to find a “real” job on their own. However, Roosevelt’s bill passed in April 1935, and the WPA was born.

Both Harry Hopkins and Harold Ickes longed to head the new $4.8 billion agency. Hopkins would spend the money quickly to create as many jobs as possible just as he had done under CWA. Ickes, on the other hand, still favored the slow process of building massive public works as he had done with the PWA. Here lay the basis for a dramatic conflict of personalities. Ickes is “stubborn and righteous,” Hopkins confided to his diary. “He is a great resigner— anything doesn’t go his way he threatens to quit.” The president favored Hopkins’s proposal of small projects employing as many people as possible, and Ickes accepted defeat bitterly. He complained that “Hopkins is dominating this program and this domination will mean thousands of inconsequential make-believe projects in all parts of the country.”

Ickes’s Public Works Administration continued to build many useful public projects until it was abandoned in 1941, but for better or for worse, Hopkins got the greater part of the jobs money, and his beliefs guided the administration’s employment program.

The WPA in Operation

The WPA’s object was to provide work on useful public projects. It was not to compete with or replace private industries, and it therefore paid less than the private sector. The jobs it provided were designed to help communities that needed the most help, and 80 percent of the money for the projects came from the federal government. Local governments were required to supply at least 20 percent of the money spent in the regions under their control. Requests for projects were first made in local communities and had to be approved by WPA administrators. Projects were expected to provide the highest possible number of jobs to help the unemployed in the vicinity.

Harold L. Ickes

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Accomplishments of the WPA

From May 1935 to June 1943, the WPA spent $11 billion and completed more than 250,000 different projects. These ranged from paving roads to exterminating rats, from building stadiums to stuffing birds, from improving airports to making books for the blind, from planting trees to supporting the world’s great symphonies. The WPA built or improved enough roads to circle the world 24 times and completed 700 miles of bridges. WPA dollars were used to build ten new buildings for every county in the country and to repair another 80,000. WPA workers taught 1.5 million illiterate men and women to read and write, recorded personal narratives of former slaves, wrote and produced plays, painted murals in hundreds of post offices, and assisted victims of floods.

Criticisms of the WPA

Not everyone liked the WPA; a poll taken during the 1930s showed that 23 percent of all Americans thought it the “worst” of all New Deal programs. Budget balancers feared that government money was being wasted. Unions and industry complained of competition with regular business, and WPA workers protested that the pay was too low and there weren’t enough jobs. African Americans and other minorities claimed they either couldn’t get hired or, if employed, got paid less than whites. Republicans complained that government jobs were used to buy votes, and conservatives feared the beginnings of a socialist state. Poking fun at WPA workers became a national pastime. Most of the complaints, however, focused on the inefficiency of WPA workers.

Efficiency and the WPA

Critics of the WPA, as we have seen, used the word “boondoggling” to describe its activities. Many argued that it would have been far cheaper to give home relief to the unemployed than to spend money on useless projects. Critics of the WPA believed private industries operating with the profit motive would have done better work for less money. Hundreds of examples among the WPA’s 250,000 projects illustrate the boondoggling criticism. In Cleveland, the WPA spent $179,000 counting the same trees a private contractor was willing to count for $5000. A rat extermination project in New Orleans ended up costing $2.97 a rat. Twenty-one thousand dollars was spent placing 2000 street signs in Montgomery, Alabama, and it cost $78,000 to repair a ditch in Denver, Colorado.

Supporters of the WPA countered criticism by claiming that occasional cases of fraud or corruption were the fault of the local governments that supervised each

Roadwork (shown here) accounted by far for the largest number of

WPA projects

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project. Supporters also said that the notion that private industries could do things cheaper was missing the point—private industries weren’t employing the unemployed. “If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this Depression,” President Roosevelt exclaimed, “that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of people for many years to come.”

WPA According to One Worker

“One reason people here don’t like WPA is because they don’t understand it’s not all bums and drunks and aliens! Nobody ever explains to them that they’d never have had the new High School they’re so god dam proud of if it hadn’t been for WPA. They don’t stop to figure that new brick sidewalks wouldn’t be there, the shade trees wouldn’t be all dressed up to look at along High Street and all around town, if it weren’t for WPA projects. To most in this town…WPA’s just a racket we set up to give a bunch of loafers and drunks steady pay to indulge in their vices! They don’t stop to consider that in WPA are men and women who have traveled places and seen things, been educated and found their jobs folded up and nothing to replace them with…some of ‘em on here with me,—M.I.T. graduates,—U. of Alabama —Dartmouth—Yale plenty of them can’t get work, and why?”

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Student Activities

A. Graphic Organizer:

Fill in the proper information under each heading. (Note: the first row has been filled out for you)

Initials of agency

Initials stand forJobs were

provided for whom?

Mission and accomplishments

Life span of agency

FERA Federal Emergency Relief

Administration

Unemployed, mainly white

men

Provide temporary jobs for

unemployed

Winter of 1933–34

CWA

CCC

PWA

WPA

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B. Student Exercises

Describe the different views held by Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins about 1. how to help the unemployed. Who do you think was right? Explain.

What rules were formed to:2. make sure that WPA projects would help a local community?a. make sure that communities would not be too poor to afford having a b. WPA project?make sure that WPA did not hire people who might have preferred to c. work for a private contractor?

3. Based on information in this chapter, explain whether you believe that, notwithstanding its critics, the WPA was well worth what it cost. Write a statement of no less than 75 words to explain the reasons for your answer.

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For Further Consideration: Proposing a WPA-Type Project

Use your imagination to design a WPA project that would help your community in a time of high unemployment. Write your proposal in a way that would make the project attractive enough to win support from your community and get funded by the national government. Be prepared to present your proposal in class and to respond to criticism.

President Roosevelt and the WPA - WordPress.com · result, Roosevelt came up with a more permanent program to care for the unemployed. The Works Project Administration is Born On

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