Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal. The WPA's first appropriation in 1935 was $4.9 billion. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools, and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing. In 1942, the WPA played a key role in both building and staffing internment camps to incarcerate Japanese Americans. At its peak in 1938, it supplied paid jobs for three million unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA employed 8.5 million people. Hourly wages were typically kept well below industry standards. Full employment, which was reached in 1942 and appeared as a long-term national goal around 1944, was not the goal of the WPA; rather, it tried to supply one paid job for all families in which the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment. In one of its most famous projects, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. The five projects dedicated to these were the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project (FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former slaves in the South were interviewed; these documents are of immense importance to American history. Theater and music groups toured throughout the United States and gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, and the development of professional archaeology in the US. The WPA was a federal program that ran its own projects in cooperation with state and local governments, which supplied 10–30% of the costs. Usually, the local sponsor provided land and often trucks and supplies, with the WPA responsible for wages. WPA sometimes took over state and local relief programs that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) or Federal Emergency Relief Administration programs (FERA). It was liquidated on June 30, 1943, because of low unemployment during World War II. Robert D. Leininger asserted: "millions of people needed subsistence incomes. Work relief was preferred over public assistance because it maintained self-respect, reinforced the work ethic, and kept skills sharp."
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