The story of the "Works Progress Administration"

Background info:
     In 1935, about halfway through president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term, The FDR administration's "New Deal" programs began to fail.  At this time, Americans felt that the New Deal was doing too little to help the poor or rebuild society, so grassroots activists from both sides began to call out for greater, more progressive reforms.  Upton Sinclair (the socialist author who wrote The Jungle) ran for governor in California intent to "End Poverty In California" he called his program the EPIC Campaign (and epic it was, even though he lost — more on that in another blog).
     Meanwhile, even the equivalents of this century's Glenn Becks, such as a catholic quasi-fascist radio host named Fr. Charles Caughlin, and a hyper-conservative octogenarian demagogue name Francis Townsend, were calling for newer, more progressive government programs and reforms.  In order to stay elected (the politician's prime directive), FDR had to invent some new New Deal programs, ones that would keep people impressed until November 1936.

 The meat of it:
     The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, was a government program with a $1.39 billion budget (astronomical for the time) created as part of the "Second New Deal."

"My baby told me this morning, just about the break of day
Said: "You oughta get up this morning, get you a job on that WPA"

     The WPA was designed to literally "make work" for people and stimulate the economy by getting folks to do things for their communities in exchange for money.  The program lasted until 1943, when the World War 2 made unemployment go away.  Congress decided that the program was no longer necessary and eliminated it.  The WPA succeeded at boosting FDR's public image just enough for him to be re-elected (and then world war 2 would allow him to be re-elected twice more, making him America's only 4-term dictator... er, president).  However, support for the WPA was far from unanimous.  It was criticized by both conservatives and progressives.

     The WPA was dismissed by conservative critics as being an incredibly lazy organization.  The Acronym WPA was sometimes said to stand for“we poke around,” “we piddle around,” “we putter along,” “working piss ants,” and “whistle, piss, and argue.”
     WPA workers were accused of spending all their time "leaning on shovels" not doing any work.  Part of this stigma was justified because the WPA offered a "security wage" —meaning that WPA workers would get paid every week regardless of whether or not they made progress on their projects or not.

     Meanwhile, people on the left, as well was poor people, argued that the WPA really was not good enough to sustain the people working on it.  And as it turns out, this criticism was not only justified, but intentional on behalf of the FDR administration.  The WPA was meant neither to provide work for everybody, nor provide adequate wages for anybody.
     The WPA was designed and run by Harry Hopkins, who decided that the WPA should provide jobs for no more than 3.5 million of the 20 million Americans who were on relief at the time.  On interview, Hopkins described his method as the following:

1. Take 20 million people on relief
2. Subtract children, the elderly, housekeepers, students, the infirm, and farmers
3. take that figure and create jobs for roughly two thirds of those people.  Because the government only wants to encourage one person from every couple (presumably the man) to have a job. 

     Furthermore, the WPA limited its workers to work no more than 30 hours every week.  It also paid them between $20 and $90 a month.  This means that the average WPA worker only made about $660 a year, even though a subsistence-living wage at the time was $1200 a year ($100 a month).
     Roosevelt's government engineered the WPA to look like a real job, but not BE a real job.  They did this so that the WPA would be appealing enough to join, but not so appealing that people would continue working at the WPA if they could get a "real job" instead.

So what did the WPA do?

"Work Pays America" is a propaganda piece produced by the WPA about the WPA.  It documents all the different projects that the WPA undertook: You can certainly "skim" it, but make sure to hit these Highlights:

• Introduction
• 1:18 - Infrastructure and road-building
• 5:13 - Building airports
• 17:46-21:49 visual artists emplyed by the WPA
• 22:15 - Disaster relief
• 30:00 - Parks and playgrounds
• 31:51 - A toy library (the best institution ever, I had one when I was little)

     "We Work Again" shows the ways in which the WPA allowed Africa-Americans, specifically, to return to work.  Interestingly enough, parts of "We Work Again" seem to be almost shot-for-shot remakes of the all-white "Work Pays America."
     Again, feel free to skim the video:



The Housing demolition project mentioned at 2:31 of "We Work Again" could very well have been a real-life inspiration for this blues song by Casey Bill Weldon:



It's about a man who can't afford his rent because the unemployment dole isn't enough, so he is evicted, and then his house is demolished by the WPA. :(

     The Federal Art Project, or FAP, was a program within the WPA that hired visual and performing artists to create artwork for their communities.  It was one of the largest parts of the WPA.

FAP Facts:

• It supposedly created more than 200,000 individual works of art.
• Jackson Pollock got his start in the FAP.  

(Now, I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking,

Well, he's the guy who painted THAT thing and thousands of others just like it.  He invented a method of painting called "the drip-dry method" where he stands over a canvas and lets paint fall randomly upon it.  Here is a delightful FLASH GAME where you can paint like Jackson Pollock.  I only tried to paint like him once in real life.  I was six.  My parents were MAD.

Anyway, Jackson Pollock got work with  the FAP because there was no market for non-representational art at the time, so for Pollock and other "Abstract Expressionists" government employment was the only option.)

The Federal Art Project also created a lot of murals which can be seen all over the country.  Here is one example:

The FAP is also responsible for creating all of the famous posters of the 1930s, and contributing greatly to the way we perceive the STYLE of that era.

Here is a slideshow of posters designed by workers of the WPA:


And with that, Goodnight.  The lesson is over :)