One of the most ambitious programs enacted by the Franklin Roosevelt Administration during
the Great Depression was the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
What was the WPA?
What kinds of projects were they concerned with?
Created by an executive order from President Roosevelt, the goal of the Works Progress
Administration was to provide a paying job for any family whose primary wage-earner was
unemployed.
Most of the workers the WPA employed were unskilled laborers who were hired for construction
projects.
There were many different kinds of WPA projects.
Parks, bridges, roads, courthouses, schools, and hospitals were all constructed by WPA
workers.
Museums, city halls, and swimming pools were constructed as well.
To this day, most communities in the United States have a park, bridge, or school that
was built by the agency.
The program greatly benefited rural areas in the South and western regions of the nation
where facilities such as these were desperately needed.
The WPA also assisted women who found themselves unemployed during the Great Depression.
The Household Service Demonstration Project trained 30,000 women in skills needed to be
a domestic servant (such as a house-keeper or maid).
Trainees were taught how to cook, sew, wash and iron clothes, and many other skills that
might be needed.
Not all of the WPA programs were for unskilled workers.
The Federal Theatre Project, Federal Writers Project, Federal Music Project, and Federal
Art Project were all branches of the WPA intended to assist out-of-work authors, artists, actors,
and musicians.
Not everyone approved of the WPA.
Many felt that such government work programs were a way of introducing communism into the
United States.
Additionally, some believed that WPA construction efforts were being distributed on a political
basis.
For example, they claimed that the South received a large number of WPA projects because President
Roosevelt was hoping to win votes in that part of the county.
Others felt that WPA workers were lazy and developed poor work habits while involved
in the program.
1938 proved to be the peak year for the WPA.
That year, jobs were provided to more than three million people.
Throughout the entirety of the program, the WPA provided short-term labor for eight million
Americans.
With the onset of U.S. involvement in World War II in 1941, the need for the program diminished
as millions of American men were conscripted into military service.
The remainder of the nation’s laborers found jobs in American factories, producing tanks
and planes for America’s war effort.
With the need for the program gone, Congress terminated the WPA in 1943.
Over the course of its existence, the WPA constructed more than 40,000 new buildings
and improved another 85,000.
Amongst these structures were nearly 6,000 new schools and more than 1,000 libraries.