Labor History Archives
The WPA
What follows are some pictures of past strikes in Seattle.
The Works Progress Administration (later Works Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created on May 6, 1935 with the signing of U.S. Presidential Executive Order 7034. It was the largest and most comprehensive New Deal agency. Headed by Harry L. Hopkins, it was a "make work" program that provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression. WPA projects primarily employed unskilled blue-collar workers in construction projects across the nation, but also employed some white-collar artists and writers on smaller-scale projects, and even ran a circus. Youth programs were operated by the National Youth Administration, or NYA. Lyndon B. Johnson headed the Texas NYA before going to Congress.
The WPA built 650,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 buildings, and seven hundred miles of airport runways. It presented 225,000 concerts to audiences totalling 150 million, and produced almost 475,000 works of art. Even today, almost sixty years after it ceased to exist, there is no part of America that does not bear some mark of the WPA.
What do you think of our Government taxes being used this way?
The WPA had numerous critics who said that political considerations helped decide which states received the most funding. With unemployment figures falling fast due to World War II-related employment, Congress shut down the WPA on December 4, 1943.
Wikipedia Michigan artist Alfred Castagne sketching WPA construction workers. (May 19,1939) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_
Progress_AdministrationTennessee Valley Authority is a New Deal agency created to generate electric power and control floods in a seven-U.S.-state region around the Tennessee River Valley. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act creating the TVA on May 18, 1933. The agency still exists and has grown to become America's largest public power company.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the TVA Act
This flew in the face of the capitalist perspective of everything being in private hands. But those private hands only accumulated wealth and did not spread it around for the public’s good and welfare.
Main Lodge at Camp David during the
Nixon administration, February 9, 1971.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_DavidOther WPA projects include:
Dams and related structures for the
Tennessee Valley Authority
Here are some interesting aspects of the WPA which we can discern from these posters in the Library of Congress collection found at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/highlights.html
Vision being checked in schools is something we take for granted today but in the 1930’s it wasn’t done. Sanitation was addressed as well as diseases and better housing. Of course, this would all be called 'liberal socialist commie big government programs' in the “welfare state” today. Is it? If so, is it bad?
As a worker, do you think spending Government tax money on things like this good or bad?
Should our government be sponsoring stuff like this with our tax dollars or should it all be in private hands?
Again, should this be in private hands? As corporate control becomes even more complete, will working people be able to afford diversity in lifestyle and information?
In 1936, the Federal Works Progress Administration hired some 9,000 unemployed King County residents on 271 different projects ranging from improving roads and parks to serving school lunches. Congress reduced funding for the WPA in 1937, causing nationwide layoffs. In Seattle, some workers stormed the WPA offices to protest the layoffs. Others staged sitdown strikes or picketed on downtown sidewalks.
This photo, taken during the summer of 1937, shows a group of WPA picketers outside the Seattle Chamber of Commerce on Third Avenue and Columbia Street. The man at right is displaying a copy of the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the American Communist Party. One of the protest signs supports the Wagner Act, a pro-union bill that eventually passed Congress.
Notes: Protest signs read: Stop WPA lay-offs. Poverty forces women to the streets. Support Wagner Act. Fools starve, workers fight. We demand cash relief.
Signs on building read: Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Third Floor.
Click on photo to see larger image
Graphic From http://content.lib.washington.edu/cgi-
bin/pview.exe?CISOROOT=/imlsmohai&CISOPTR=
3954&CISORESTMP=/imls/kcsnapshots/results-
mohai.html&CISOVIEWTMP=/imls/kcsnapshots/
view-mohai.html&CISOROWS=3&CISOCOLS=4In 1936, the Federal Works Progress Administration hired some 9,000 unemployed King County residents on 271 different projects ranging from improving roads and parks to serving school lunches. Congress reduced funding for the WPA in 1937, causing nationwide layoffs. In Seattle, some workers stormed the WPA offices to protest the layoffs. Others staged sitdown strikes or picketed on downtown sidewalks.
This photo, taken during the summer of 1937, shows a group of WPA picketers outside the Seattle Chamber of Commerce on Third Avenue and Columbia Street. The man at right is displaying a copy of the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the American Communist Party. One of the protest signs supports the Wagner Act, a pro-union bill that eventually passed Congress.
Notes: Protest signs read: Stop WPA lay-offs. Poverty forces women to the streets. Support Wagner Act. Fools starve, workers fight. We demand cash relief.
Signs on building read: Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Third Floor.
New Deal Art During the Great Depression
On May 6, 1935, the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was created to help provide economic relief to the citizens of the United States who were suffering through the Great Depression.
You can see some of the art created at the time at http://www.wpamurals.com/
click on photo to see larger image
Renton, WA Post Office
(now in the Renton Public Library, Highlands Branch)
by Jacob Elshin (1939)
The WPA was part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Roosevelt was from the moneyed class. There is an old saying that when you ain’t got noth’in, you ain’t got noth’in to lose. Roosevelt saved the ruling class in America from a second American revolution. And who knows how that would have turned out. The Capitalists stayed in power and today, we are looking at history repeating itself. What will our Country be like in another 20 to 30 years?
HOMEWORK
Talk about some of this at work. How do others see Roosevelt?
Do they understand he saved capitalism for another grand day like today?
“The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty.
Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness.
Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution.
An eye for an eye makes the world blind.
If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity.
To fight evil one must also recognize one's own responsibility.
The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans.”
HM Queen Beatrix
of the Netherlands
From theChristmas Message 2001
http://home.wxs.nl/~We are stronger together.
We have to fight to get our fair share.
We can win,
just like we have in the past.
