On this day in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration.
The agency was responsible for one of the many relief programs set up soon after Roosevelt entered the White House. Created under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which Roosevelt signed a month earlier, it sought to ease the effects of the Great Depression.
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While FDR professed a strong belief in the “elementary principles of justice and fairness,” he also rejected the notion of paying welfare to able workers. So, in exchange for financial assistance to “the deserving poor,” recipients of WPA aid built highways, schools, hospitals and airports. They restored theaters and even built a ski lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon.
At one point, the WPA was the nation’s largest employer. Nearly every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school built by the agency, which especially benefited rural areas and Western states. From 1936 to 1939, the WPA doled out nearly $7 billion — some $90 billion in today’s dollars.
The WPA also put creative professionals back to work by sponsoring plays, literary publications and public mural projects. Congress safeguarded the private sector from competition with WPA projects by placing stringent wage and price caps on federally funded programs.
In the years before World War II, congressional foes of the New Deal succeeded in scaling back WPA appropriations. By 1940, as the economy surged as a result of defense industry production, WPA programs were sharply curtailed.
In 1943, Congress effectively ended many programs created under the ERA Act — including the WPA.
Source: “American-Made — The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work,” by Nick Taylor (2008)