Works Progress Administration. One of the most prominent of the New Deal agencies, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established in 1935 as an ambitious and wide‐ranging federal jobs program. Harry
Hopkins, an advocate of federally funded employment for the jobless, was appointed by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in 1934 to head the WPA's immediate predecessor, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), a limited work‐relief program operating under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Its funds exhausted, the CWA ceased operations after only a few months.
The WPA, funded under the 1935 Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, differed from the CWA by seeking to provide employment on necessary projects rather than merely make‐work tasks—to replace relief with real jobs. WPA undertakings included such diverse activities as building and road construction, day‐nursery work, bookbinding, a federal theater project, a writers’ project, research for the
Library of Congress, the creation and maintenance of parks and recreational facilities, and many other forms of blue‐ and white‐collar employment. Jobs were of limited duration and usually paid prevailing wages. All told, the WPA employed some 8.5 million people.
The WPA—along with the entire New Deal—encountered considerable opposition from conservatives in Congress. In 1939 the Dies Committee, headed by Congressman Martin Dies of Texas, investigated alleged communist influence in the agency, focusing on the Federal Theater Project, which was terminated that year.
Renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939, the WPA became increasingly involved in defense work; by late 1941, 40 percent of its workers were employed in defense projects. After the United States entered
World War II, war work and military service drastically reduced unemployment and in 1942, Roosevelt declared that the WPA had “earned an honorable discharge.” It was disbanded on 30 June 1943.
See also
Depressions, Economic;
New Deal Era, The;
Unemployment.
Bibliography
Paul S. Kurzman , Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, 1974.
Anthony J. Badger , The New Deal, 1989.
Kenneth Franklin Kurz