The Works Progress Administration 19351943: Social Safety Net, Central Planning or Political Pragmat

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The Works Progress Administration (1935-1943)
Social Safety Net, Central Planning or Political
Pragmatism? Cameron M. WeberPhD student in
economics and historical studiesNew School for
Social Research
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Photo of Philip Guston, Maintaining Americas
Skills, WPA Building, New York Worlds Fair 1939,
from Francis V. OConnor, The Deal New Deal Art
Projects An Anthology of Memoirs (1972).
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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
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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.

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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?
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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.

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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.

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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).

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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,
  FDRs 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, FDRs Inner Circle
  and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America
  (2009) all do contain WPA index items.

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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, 1935-1941, Social Science
  History 29 (2005).

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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.
• Roosevelts public proclamations show that WPA
  intended as safety net, not central planning.

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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.

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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.

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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 Administrations 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
  Administrations pro-labor agenda and using WPA
  funds to reward electoral support.

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WPA as Political Pragmatism
Graph from Weber, How Flexible was the Works
Progress Administration in Responding to
Unemployment during the Great Depression?
(2009), Draft available from cameroneconomics.com.

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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 peoples
  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.

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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).

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WPA as Cultural Change Agent ?

• By using the lens of political economy to focus
  on the New Deals 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).

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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).

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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.
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