| Works Projects Administration |
Article Index for Works |
Website Links For Works |
Information AboutWorks Projects 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.
The WPA employed a maximum of 3.3 million in November 1938.According to Nancy Rose' Put to Work. 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. 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
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." SEE ALSO REFERENCES Notes Scholarly studies
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|