Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs. With work difficult to find during the Great Depression (1929–41), the WPA was established to provide employment to citizens while improving the nation's public works. Congress authorized the WPA

through passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act in April 1935. In 1939 the name was changed to the Works Projects Administration.

During its existence, the WPA employed more than 8.5 million people on over 1.5 million projects. With the intention to put most of its funding into wages rather than materials, the WPA undertook a vast range of projects. It constructed more than six hundred thousand miles of highways, roads, and streets, and repaired and constructed more than a hundred thousand bridges, a hundred thousand public buildings, thousands of parks and airfields, and thousands of recreational facilities. Federal projects in theater, writing, and visual arts employed artists in painting murals in public spaces, producing public theater performances, and writing state guidebooks. Dentists, nurses, biologists, and other skilled professionals also received work.

The WPA was in many ways a success, helping many individuals, stimulating business during the Depression, and benefiting the nation as a whole. However, political complications, including charges of favoritism, waste, and disorganization owing to the sheer size of the program, hindered its effectiveness. In 1943 President Roosevelt dissolved the program. As a result of World War II (1939–45), the unemployed were finding work in wartime production, and the WPA was no longer necessary.