15

Only WPA skilled professional and technical workers in counties including cities having a population of 25,000 or more earned $74 per month in Mississippi -- one dollar above the estimated need level for a family of four while the average family size of WPA workers was 3.75.

Although the WPA usually attempted to permit workers who lost time because of sickness, bad weather, or other factors outside of their control to make it up, it was estimated that workers averaged a loss of 5 percent of their wages per year, such loss being concentrated in winter months and times of sickness. Hours were generally set at 130 per month with not more than a 40 hour week, and an 8 hour day. Although there were no fringe benefits, workers were generally guaranteed compensation for accidents as a result of work.1 15

Training and Education

As mentioned, WPA was thought of primarily as a temporary work relief program. Although there were some educational activities conducted on WPA projects, vocational education for enrollees was not a major component of the program. Most of the money for education was expended by the Division of Education within WPA, and over half of the educational training was for general adult education, literacy and naturalization or leisure time activities with only 1/8th spent for vocational education. One of the largest vocational educational projects was one to train domestic servants which enrolled over 18,000 people. The following chart gives a breakdown of how the 1,641,000 educational enrollees of May 1937, a fairly typical period, were broken down:16

0

Seven basic criteria were used in choosing projects. These included:

1) Utility

2) Labor intensiveness

3) Dollar return from the facility once it was built

4) Immediacy

5) Amount of employment provided for those on relief rolls

6) Proximity to domicile of unemployed

7) Speed with which unemployed could be put to work.

Using these basic criteria the WPA funded many and varied projects, ging from small projects costing a hundred dollars or so to New York's' ́ th Beach Airport (La Guardia), which cost $40,000,000. The WPA classid its projects under either the Division of Operations or the Division Community Service Programs. Of total money spent the former used 78 cent and the latter 21.6 percent with the remainder in other projects. following chart shows the distribution:

Other (water supply airports & airways, conservation,

.

#

(including national defense and vocational
training)

Over the period from July 1935 to June 1941 the WPA spent

0.4

$8,302,000,000 on enrollee wages averaging close to $1.4 billion per

year. During that time there was an average of 2,060,000 persons enrolled
every month. In 1938 the number enrolled was equal to three times the
combined workforce of American Telephone and Telegraph, General Electric,
Westinghouse, U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, and the B & 0,
New York Central, Pennsylvania, and Union Pacific Railroads, However,
this was only 5 percent of the total number of workers gainfully employed,
and at its highest point in October and November 1936 and 1938 the WPA,
enrolled no more than 31 percent of the unemployed. In February 1939
over 1,330,000 unemployed people certified eligible for the WPA were not
employed on its rolls.

Over the life of the Agency 84 million people with 30 million dependents worked more than 12 million man-years for the WPA. This is more than 6 time

18

punt estimated utilized in building the pyramids in Egypt. Some of
ork was wasted. WPA workers were under numerous constraints, not
st of which was their lack of tools and materials to compete with
: employees. Estimates of efficiency of WPA workers range from 20
ercent. Local WPA administrators have stated that the efficiency
workers compared favorably with that of local road and telephone
n spite of the constraints under which they operated. 17

ishments

d what did the WPA accomplish?

built 651,000 miles of new roads, enough to go 24 times around

ld. It built or reconstructed 124,000 bridges and viaducts, which,

ed end to end, would stretch over 800 miles. It built or reconstructed public buildings, including enough new buildings (35,000) for ten

19

These figures include the construction of New York's Central Park Zoo, San Francisco's Aquatic Park, San Antonio's and Chicago's waterfronts, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the restoration of Independence Hall in Philadelphia and Faneuil Hall in Boston. Furthermore WPA workers sewed 342,800,000 garments, served 765,000,000 school lunches, and preserved 60,000,000 quarts of food. WPA orchestras played before 150 million listerners. WPA educational projects are estimated to have cut the illiteracy rate in Arkansas by 40 percent. The tangible monuments to the WPA abound furthermore in books, plays, hiking guides, and murals them undistinguished, others real contributions to culture.

some of

However, the projects constructed and the services rendered are less important then the money paid out in salaries. Jackson Pollock, Conrad Aiken, Orson Welles, and William de Kooning were only a few of the creative men who worked on WPA. Richard Wright supported himself as a WPA manual laborer, and in 1936 on the basis of a sample of his writings he was tranferred to a writer's project for which he wrote Uncle Tom's Children. Four years later he published Native Son, a best seller. Few people wrote Native Sons, but millions maintained their self respect and fed themselves and their dependents as a result of the WPA. 19