Showing posts with label Works Progress Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Works Progress Administration. Show all posts

Saturday, July 23, 2016

BRING BACK THE NEW DEAL!




A poster created by WPA artists

In our travels, especially those taking us through the national parks, we often see buildings and roads dating from the thirties, when FDR’s administration  established many conservation projects as part of the New Deal. Always interested in conservation of natural resources, FDR cared deeply about human conservation as well.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC ) provided work for more than 300,000 young men who were unemployed during the Depression. Those were the Dust Bowl years, when soil blew away from farms, and families lost their livelihood. In addition, the stock market crash of 1929 had led to massive unemployment in rural and urban areas as well.

The CCC jobs were tough; the men were not given much training, and performed manual labor. They stocked streams with fish, fought wildfires, built highways, and did other difficult, important work. Sadly, after beginning as integrated programs, CCC programs soon became segregated, and blacks were prevented from moving into supervisory positions. [i] It was also limited to men, who at that time were considered the breadwinners of their families.

When World War II began, many young men were drafted or joined the military services voluntarily, which provide employment for them and reduced the pool available for the CCC. Within a few years the CCC had largely disappeared, though even today many states have smaller programs based on it.

Another popular New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), provided needed income for many writers and artists.  Artists supported by the WPA’S Federal Art Project (including Jackson Pollock[ii] and Thomas Hart Benton[iii]) collectively created more than 100,000 paintings and murals and over 18,000 sculptures.[iv]  Many can still be seen in places such as Coit Tower in San Francisco.

Perhaps it is time to bring back these New Deal programs. Many people who lack computer and other specialized skills are unemployed. Most writers and artists receive notoriously low compensation for their work.  If unemployed or underpaid men and women were able to make a little money while contributing to the infrastructure, they would be paying taxes instead of collecting welfare. The heavy physical labor of the CCC workers would not be possible for everyone, but most people could work in some capacity. We can, in the words of a prominent politician, “make America great again.” Not by building a wall along our border or deporting Muslims, but by investing in all our people and in projects that benefit the environment.


Text copyright 2016 by Carol Leth Stone