Works Progress Administration (WPA)

The Works Progress Administration (WPA)

The largest and most important of the New Deal cultural programs was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a massive employment relief program launched in the spring of 1935 -- the beginning of FDR's "Second New Deal," as his second term came to be known. In his Annual Message to Congress on January 4 of that year, Roosevelt spoke critically of the failure of his administration's first-term efforts:

We find our population suffering from the old inequalities, little changed by our past sporadic remedies. In spite of our effort and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the overprivileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged....We have...a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear the conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. {2}
Though the New Deal failed to accomplish the fundamental structural changes FDR's words suggest, his administration entered its second phase in 1935 with a renewed commitment to long-range and sweeping reform of American institutions, emphasizing social justice.

Persistent unemployment was a continuing concern, and Roosevelt felt that simply doling out relief payments would mean "spiritual and moral disintegration destructive to the national fibre." {3} On May 6, 1935, the Works Progress Administration was established under the direction of long-time FDR aide Harry Hopkins. The WPA philosophy was to put the unemployed back to work in jobs which would serve the public good and conserve the skills and the self-esteem of workers throughout the U.S.

From: href="http://www.wwcd.org/policy/US/newdeal.html">New Deal Cultural Programs: Experiments in Cultural Democracy by Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard