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Comprehensive treatment of WPA is no boon doggle
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Published: September 21, 2008
AMERICAN-MADE: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work. By Nick Taylor. Bantam Books. 630 pages. $27.
This comprehensive study of Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) provides all the information most history aficionados would want to know (and maybe more) about the New Deal's massive relief program. Nick Taylor, the author of nine previous nonfiction works, divides his study into extraordinarily short chapters of three to six pages -- probably in an attempt to lessen the tedium of a long and detailed book.
Taylor begins with the ineffective Herbert Hoover, who saw the government as an "umpire" rather than an actor in the economy. He denied that anyone was starving. In the same vein, an insurance company issued an announcement that might be relevant in today's society: It found that the nation's health was improving "because less money and less food meant people were no longer overeating."
After Roosevelt's victory in 1932, his administration faced rising mass discontent, marches on Washington, and clashes of Socialists and Communists with the forces of law and order. Something had to be done, and a flurry of legislation included programs to alleviate the miseries of the approximately 25 percent of the nation that was unemployed.
The WPA was preceded by several state and federal programs that were inadequate for the magnitude of the crisis confronting the nation. The massive WPA, headed by Harry Hopkins, began in 1935 and employed millions of workers (the author includes numerous statistics) until it was phased out during World War II. Harold L. Ickes headed a companion agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA), which concentrated on large projects such as the Grand Coulee dam and which received less funding because its projects employed fewer workers and did less to shorten relief rolls. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was designed for younger workers.
As the title of the book suggests, Roosevelt, Hopkins and others stressed "work relief" that would provide "permanent and useful work," unlike "direct relief," often called the "dole." They stressed the negative psychological effects of direct relief and the lack of opportunity to do useful work. Hopkins once stated that raising workers' spirits was even more important than the projects completed.
WPA programs received congressional appropriations of billions of dollars and provided every conceivable kind of work -- from unskilled labor on roads, schools, hospitals, Army and Navy bases and airports, to work for teachers, artists, writers, actors, playwrights and musicians. Incidentally, the nation's first Federal Arts Project Community Center was in Winston-Salem. When questioned about white-collar work, the outspoken Hopkins replied, "Hell, they've got to eat just like other people." Republicans circulated a multitude of stories, some in the general vein of "How many WPA workers does it take to ...?" When a WPA crafts instructor mentioned that he taught, among other things, how to make "boon doggles," a Colonial term for useful things, a new word entered the national lexicon. There were some blunders, one involving the construction of a lake near Mount Airy that had no source of water, and millions were wasted on an aborted canal across northern Florida meant to provide a shortcut from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
When queried by reporters about a New York City alderman's anti-WPA remarks, Hopkins replied: "You know some people make fun of people who speak a foreign language, and dumb people criticize something they do not understand, and that is what's going on up there -- God d-- it!" At a meeting in his home state of Iowa, someone asked who was going to pay for WPA projects and he immediately replied "You are." He pointed to the rich farm land, other natural resources, great universities and continued: "This is America, the richest country in the world. We can afford to pay for anything we want. And we want a decent life for all the people in this country. And we are going to pay for it."
The author insists that, in general, WPA workers were dedicated and efficient, and provided the nation with badly needed improvements, many of them vital to national defense when war came. The book includes a number of vignettes on WPA workers such as Kentucky's Grace Overby, known locally as the "book lady," who delivered books and magazines by foot to mountain families and schools until a neighbor loaned her a mule. And there was Orrick Johns, who headed the New York City Writers Project and made the news "when a jealous husband caught Johns with his wife, beat him, doused his wooden leg with brandy and set it on fire."
No review could do more than scratch the surface of such a long, detailed book. It seems churlish to quibble, but several times Taylor begins a topic, drops it, then finishes it later. An especially annoying example is the explanation of WPA workers' efforts to put out a persistent coal fire in southeastern Ohio that cuts off abruptly, leaving the reader hanging until much later when the author reveals that it was finally extinguished.
Nitpicking aside, this exhaustively researched volume, which is enhanced by 18 pages of photos, will reward both professional historians and readers with a special interest in the WPA and the Franklin Roosevelt administration.
■ Howard Barnes is a professor of history at Winston-Salem State University.
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