Works Progress Administration WPA

With unemployment still around 20 percent in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to replace cash relief with paid work. Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, signed on April 8, 1935, providing nearly 5 billion dollars, and Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration by executive order on May 6, 1935. It was renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939 when it became part of the new Federal Works Agency.

Over its life the WPA employed about 8.5 million people, mostly unskilled workers hired from relief rolls, peaking at more than 3 million at once in 1938. They built or repaired hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and more than 100,000 public buildings, including schools, hospitals, and courthouses, along with bridges, airports, parks, sewers, and playgrounds. Its arts programs, known as Federal One, employed artists who painted murals in post offices and public buildings, writers who produced state guidebooks and recorded the narratives of formerly enslaved people, and actors and musicians who performed for millions.

Critics charged that the WPA wasted money on make-work, mocking it as We Poke Along, and that its jobs were used to win votes, concerns that helped lead to the Hatch Act of 1939 limiting political activity by federal workers. Congress ended the Federal Theatre Project in 1939 over charges of left-wing content. As World War II created a labor shortage, Roosevelt ordered the WPA wound down in December 1942, and it ended on June 30, 1943. Supporters credit it with sustaining millions of families and leaving lasting public works and cultural records, while critics argue it crowded out private recovery and expanded federal power.