Search Results for: wpa projects

Lasting Values of the WPA

Written by Ellen Woodward, WPA Assistant Administrator in charge of the Division of Women’s and Professional Projects. “No one can better appreciate the lasting values of the work relief program than we women, for its results affect primarily that which is closest to our hearts–the home.”

Health Conservation and WPA (1939)

The following address was delivered by Mrs. Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner, Work Projects Administration. “In our WPA project work, we have come to grips with the problem of public health on a number of important fronts…we are not just talking about the need for better sanitation the need for more medical, dental and nursing service, the need of school children for hot, well-balanced lunches, the need of home visits to underprivileged families in time of illness…We’re…doing something about them.”

WPA Travelling Libraries (1937)

The depression came and county libraries were sorely stricken financially. Rescuing funds from the Federal government through relief agencies came in the nick of time. Numerous employees were being furloughed, others were having their salaries cut for the third or fourth time, book repair and book purchases had ceased, many buildings were sadly in need of repair and service was cut to the bone in the summer of 1933.

Health Conservation and the WPA

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Executive Order #7034 on May 6, 1935. President Roosevelt had the authority for this Executive Order via the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. The WPA was created to offer direct government employment to the jobless. The unemployment rate was about 20% at the time the WPA was created. The WPA lasted until June 30, 1943. The unemployment rate then was possibly below 2%, with many Americans working in the armed services, defense industries, etc. The WPA–during it’s 8 years of existence–employed over 8.5 million different Americans, and reached peak employment of over 3.3 million in late 1938.

Hot Lunches for a Million School Children

One million undernourished children have benefited by the Works Progress Administration’s school lunch program. In the past year and a half 80,000,000 hot well-balanced meals have been served at the rate of 500,000 daily in 10,000 schools throughout the country.

The Problem of Unemployment : January, 1935

Speech given by Aubrey Williams, Assistant Works Progress Administrator and Executive Director of the National Youth Administration before the Buffalo Council of Social Agencies. “You and I know that the problem of unemployment does not stem directly from industrial depression…it was spawned in an era of giddy expansionism…it is an inescapable concomitant of our type of civilization…its roots are now sunk in the very bedrock of our capitalist society.”

Widows and Waifs

Written by Dr. June Hopkins, Armstrong Atlantic State University. This essay investigates the connections between the child-saving movement to reform orphanages and the widows’ pension movement in New York City during the Progressive Era.

The Widows’ Pension Movement and its Connection to Orphanages

Widows and Waifs: New York City and the American Way to Welfare, 1913-1916 by June Hopkins, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Armstrong Atlantic State University Background In New York City, during the early decades of the 20th century, progressive reformers made deliberate use of the child-saving impulse to initiate a new welfare methodology. This had a…

That “One Third of a Nation” (1940)

Article by Edith Elmer Wood, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. “Equal opportunity which lies at the heart of democracy implies for every man, woman and child at least a sporting chance to attain health, decency and a normal family life. It was because the cards were stacked against a third of the nation that there had to be a new deal in housing.”

The Tennessee Valley Authority: Electricity for All

TVA was one of the most ambitious projects of the New Deal, encompassing many of FDR’s own interests in conservation, public utility regulation, regional planning, agricultural development, and the social and economic improvement of the “Forgotten Americans.”