|
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, employing millions of people and affecting every locality. It continued and expanded the FERA relief programs begun under Herbert Hoover and continued under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Headed by Harry L. Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. It built many public buildings and roads, and as well operated a large arts project. Until it was closed down by Congress in 1943, it was the largest employer in the country--indeed, the largest employer in most states. Only unemployed people on relief were eligible for most of its jobs. The hourly wages were the prevailing wages in the area, but workers could not work more than 20-30 hours a week. Before 1940 there was no training involved to teach people new skills.
Types of Projects About 75 percent of 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. Though some 90% of WPA projects were directed at unskilled blue-collar workers, it also took in unemployed white-collar artists, musicians, actors, and writers in such projects as the Federal Theater Project and the Federal Writers' Project. Worker Profile 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 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. 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.
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 to limit a person to 30 hours or less a week of work. 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. Howard 129 The WPA had numerous conservative critics, unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was quite popular. One of the principal criticisms was that the program wasted federal dollars on projects that were not always needed or wanted. A relic of this criticism survives today in the form of a satirical observation that WPA workers were hired 'to rake leaves in the park.' White-collar WPA projects in particular were often singled out for their sometimes overtly left-wing social and political themes. One criticism of the allocation of WPA projects and funding was that they were often made for political considerations. Congressional leaders in favor with the Roosevelt administration, or who possessed considerable seniority and political power often helped decide which states and localities received the most funding. The most serious criticism was that Roosevelt was building a nationwide political machine with millions of workers. The Hatch Act of 1939 was designed to forbid political activities on government time but the WPA remained politically manipulated by left-wing interestsā. 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. Unemployment disappeared with the onset of war production in World War II, so Congress shut down the WPA in late 1943. Relief for Blacks The share of FERA and WPA benefits going to blacks exceeded their proportion of the general population. The FERA's first relief census reported that more than two million blacks were on relief in early 1933, a fraction of the black population (17.8%) that was nearly double the proportion of whites on relief (9.5%). By 1935, there were 3,500,000 blacks (men, women and children) on relief, almost 30 percent of the black population; plus another 200,000 black adults were working on WPA projects. Altogether in 1935, about 40 percent of the nation's black families were either on relief or were employed by the WPA. Civil rights leaders at first complained 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 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." Howard 287 Nationwide in late 1937, 15.2% were African American. The NAACP magazine Opportunity hailed the WPA: February, 1939, p. 34. in Howard 295
Types of Projects Hostile humor See also Notes Scholarly studies | ||||||||
|
| |||||||||
 |
|
| |