Transcript The Works Progress Administration (1935

The Works Progress Administration
(1935-1943): Social Safety Net,
Central Planning or Political
Pragmatism?
Cameron M. Weber
PhD student in economics and historical studies
New School for Social Research
Photo of Philip Guston, Maintaining America’s Skills, WPA Building,
New York World’s Fair 1939, from Francis V. O’Connor, The Deal New
Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs (1972).
The Works Progress Administration
(1935-1943): Social Safety Net,
Central Planning or Political
Pragmatism?
“We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and
elect and elect.”
– Harry Hopkins, Administrator of the Works
Progress Administration, in 1938
The Works Progress Administration
(1935-1943): Social Safety Net, Central
Planning or Political Pragmatism?
Research is combination of History of
Economics, History of Public Policy, Political
History, Political Economy and
Historiography.
Motivation for Research is to understand
development of welfare state in American
society.
The WPA (1935-1943)
Research Methodology: “a conscious approach to a subject
of research by means of theoretical questions and
methodological principles,“ Georg J. Iggers, Historiography in
the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the
Postmodern Challenge (1997).
Attempted to find all journal articles and monographs over
the last 20 years which mention both the New Deal and the
WPA in order to answer research question,
Was the WPA a social safety net, central planning or was it
political pragmatism?
What was the WPA ?
• US Government acted as long-term “qualified”
employer of last resort (first and last time this has
happened).
• Largest peacetime program in American history
until that time (initial appropriation in 1935
almost 7% of GDP).
• Almost 25% of all American families received
income from the WPA during its life-of-program.
What was the WPA ?
• Operated in all 48 states.
• Built approx. 480 airports, 78,000 bridges 40,000 public
buildings, 67,000 miles of city streets, 24,000 miles of
sidewalks, 24,000 miles of sewer lines, 19,700 miles of
water mains, 500 water treatment facilities and
572,000 miles of rural highways.
• Employed approx. 5,000 artists, with art centers in all
states, created 2 million pro-WPA lithographs and
created continuous series of WPA art exhibits.
WPA Relief in Comparison with the Workforce
(Thousands of Persons)
1935
Workforce
Employed by
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
53,140 53,740 54,320 54,950 55,600 56,180 57,530 60,380 64,560
2,667
2,267
5.02%
4.22%
1,738
2,956
2,351
1,808
1,232
518
42
the WPA
WPA Employment
3.20% 5.38% 4.23% 3.22% 2.14% 0.86% 0.07%
as Percentage
of Workforce
Notes: WPA figures from U.S. Federal Works Agency (1947), pp. 106-109, author converted WPA
Fiscal Year data to calendar year data to allow comparison; workforce figures from Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
Results of Research on WPA
• Long historiography on New Deal but WPA itself has only
been object of analysis for around the last 10 years.
• WPA has been “understudied”, Amenta and Halfmann,
“Who Voted with Hopkins? Institutional Politics and the
WPA”, The Journal of Policy History 13 (2001).
• Historians have “missed” changing priorities of American
state by overlooking large spending on public works during
the New Deal, Jason Scott Smith, “The New Deal Order,”
Enterprise and Society 9 (2008) and Smith, Building New Deal
Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956
(2006).
Results of Research on WPA
• Skocpal, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political
Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992) and
Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping
American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (1996)
contain no index reference to WPA.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in
Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999); Powell, FDR’s
Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the
Great Depression (2003); Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A
New History of the Great Depression (2007) and Cohen,
FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created
Modern America (2009) all do contain WPA index items.
WPA as Central Planning ?
Historiographical consensus (for example Kennedy 1999 and Goldberg 2005*)
show that there were two New Deals.
• “First” New Deal (“the first 100 days” in 1933) was attempt at economic
recovery with the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Industrial
Recovery Act and the Truth in Securities Act (establishment of SEC).
• “Second” New Deal (1935-1936) was social reform and the National Labor
Relations Board, the Social Security Act, the FDIC, the FHA and the WPA.
WPA was part of social reform agenda not economic recovery agenda.
* Chad Alan Goldberg, “Contesting the Status of Relief Workers during the New Deal:
The Workers Alliance of America and the Works Progress Administration, 19351941”, Social Science History 29 (2005).
WPA as Central Planning ?
Additionally,
• Roosevelt (1932, unemployment approx. 23%), “I
regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the
most important issues in this campaign.”
• Roosevelt (1935, unemployment approx. 20%), “Of
course we will provide useful work for the needy
unemployed.”
Roosevelt’s public proclamations show that WPA
intended as safety net, not central planning.
New Deal as Social Reform
Until 1980s scholars were classifying New Deal historiographies as
“traditionalist” or “revisionist”.
• Traditionalists believe Roosevelt and New Dealers controlled agenda
and allowed only just enough social reform to save capitalism. This is
“Institutionalist theory of history” where the state has agency.
• Revisionists believe state power is tempered by need to garner votes
and thus the New Deal pushed its social reform as far as possible on
American populace. This is “political theory of history”.
* See Wallis, “Employment, Politics and Economic Recovery during the
Great Depression,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 69 (1987), for a
survey on revisionist and traditionalist New Deal literature.
WPA as Social Safety Net?
In the 1990s a new New Deal historiography developed which synthesized the
traditionalist and revisionist approaches and which uses the heretofore
“understudied” WPA as the object of analysis.
•
Flanagan, “Roosevelt, Mayors and the New Deal Regime: The Origins of
Intergovernmental Lobbying and Administration,” Polity 31 (1999) finds that WPA
funding was higher in cities which supported Roosevelt in the Presidential
elections.
•
Amenta and Poulsen, “Social Politics in Context: The Institutional Politics Theory
and Social Spending at the End of the New Deal,” Social Forces 75 (1996) uses
Institutional-Political model to show that WPA funds were spent at a higher per
capita level in cities and states which supported the New Deal goal of pro-labor
legislation.
Therefore the WPA cannot be seen as a social safety net where WPA funds are given to
those hardest hit by unemployment but rather a program where funds are given
for political purposes.
WPA as Political Pragmatism
• Goldberg 2005 finds that the WPA was “hybrid” between a
social spending program and an employment program,
balancing labor union calls for a prevailing wage (mandated by
Congress in 1939) and the Administration’s wish to prevent
prioritizing “relief” over “recovery” (Kennedy 1999).
• “The Roosevelt Administration designed the WPA as a
compromise institution in part to manage these conflicts”
(Goldberg 2005).
• And thus in the end, the WPA as implemented was political
pragmatism balancing competing political interests while
furthering the Administration’s pro-labor agenda and using
WPA funds to reward electoral support.
WPA as Political Pragmatism
Average Hourly Wages
1.40
1.20
Nominal Wage Rate ($'s)
1.00
0.80
Economy-wide
0.60
WPA
0.40
WPA wage decreases after
oppositional Congress elected
in 1938 despite 1939
prevailing wage mandate
0.20
1947
1946
1945
1944
1943
1942
1941
1940
1939
1938
1937
1936
1935
1934
1933
1932
1931
1930
1929
0.00
Graph from Weber, “How Flexible was the Works Progress Administration in
Responding to Unemployment during the Great Depression?” (2009), Draft
available from cameroneconomics.com.
WPA as Cultural Change Agent ?
Literature review finds that not enough has been written on the WPA
to determine a historiographical consensus. However,
• Smith 2008 finds that the massive and pervasive federal public
works throughout the 48 states created a cultural shift for a larger
federal government presence in the American people’s lives.
• Flanagan 1999 finds that the WPA represented a major shift in
American federalism as the WPA was used to reduce fiscal burdens
of American cities for public works projects, and, represents “the
origin of intergovernmental lobbying and administration.“
• Harris, Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in
New Deal America (1995), states that the WPA art projects helped
to create ‘cultural populism’.
WPA as Cultural Change Agent ?
• During 1921 – 1928 state and local governments
accounted for approx. 90% of US public works
spending and the federal government for approx.
10%, from Barber, From New Era to New Deal:
Herbert Hoover, the Economists, and American
Economic Policy, 1921-1933 (1985).
• During 1931 – 1938, public works spending averaged
approx. 50% federal and 50% state and local, from
Hansen, Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (1941).
WPA as Cultural Change Agent ?
“By using the lens of political economy to focus on the New
Deal’s public works spending, we can begin to see the
outlines of a different interpretation. The huge amounts
of funds devoted to public construction, the far-reaching
federal efforts invested in directing this money, and the
long-run impact of infrastructure itself form the
components of the story of a public works revolution.
This revolution helped justify the new role of the federal
government in American life, legitimizing – intellectually
and physically – what has come to be known as
Keynesian management of the economy” (Smith 2008).
The Works Progress Administration
(1935-1943): Social Safety Net, Central
Planning or Political Pragmatism?
The Pump Priming Act of 1938 was passed by a
Congress in opposition to the New Deal.
“With so many Federal dollars flowing into every
Congressional district, the first Keynesian-style
appropriations expenditure passed virtually without
Congressional opposition” (Flanagan 1999).
The Works Progress Administration
(1935-1943): Social Safety Net, Central
Planning or Political Pragmatism?
Conclusions of Research:
Historiography since the 1990s has shown the WPA to be a program of
political pragmatism, not central planning nor a social safety net.
Other writers have additionally determined that the WPA helped to
encourage a major shift in American culture and American
federalism, to one of an accepted larger role for the Federal
government in the lives of Americans.
Keynesian economics has been a part of American culture for more
than 70 years, beginning with the Pump Priming Act of 1938.