WPA: Works Progress Administration:

 

• The WPA was approved and passed by Congress on April 8, 1935, after being proposed by President Roosevelt. (History)  It was cancelled in 1943. (PBS)

• The WPA was Roosevelt's "primary attack on unemployment," and was focused around fervently securing jobs for the poor. (Taylor)

• "WPA rules were geared" to get as many jobs as possible for those who had been the most affected by the depression. One such rule stated that for any project, 90% of the budget must go to labor, and the rest could be used for other expenses. The WPA also gave many jobs to workers "on relief", which meant they were very poor and need government aid. (Taylor) The WPA was successful, securing jobs for more than 8.5 million people on public projects until its disbandment. (History)

• The WPA was designed to help the poor, unemployed citizens of America who were struggling in even worse conditions because of the depression. Giving them government jobs on public projects meant that many public projects were efficiently completed, and there was no shortage of workers available to those running the projects. The whole system it promoted was designed to provide money to the people who needed it the most, and then have them use it to buy things, "funneling money into the economy." (Taylor)

• The WPA also really supported artists, and helped them to become successful and significant players in society by using their works to decorate public buildings, therefore exposing American people to more art than before. One of the most typical art projects they sponsored was murals, which was typically very enthusiastic in its "celebration of the workingman," depicting workers such as those in the WPA in "heroic poses". (Brinkley) But the WPA did not help women as much as women had hoped. While the original hope was to pay women the same as men, women were mostly given the lower-paying, more "womanly" jobs (although some professional women were accepted into artistic circles). (PBS)

• But however hard it may have tried, "the WPA never managed to serve more than a quarter of the nation’s unemployed." (History) When WW2 rolled around, many of the unemployed found jobs building barracks and expanding bases, causing a significant drop in unemployment again. (Taylor)

• Critics of the WPA poked fun at how some of the workers often had to wait around for others to finish their tasks before they could start their own. Thus critics started saying the acronym stood for "We Poke Along." (Taylor) Apart from inefficiency, the other main critique of the WPA was that the "government funds.. were used to reward Democrats at the expense of Republicans." (Ladenburg)

• I would characterize the WPA itself an immediate relief when it comes to unemployment, but I would consider the infrastructure it gave America an extremely beneficial and significant reform. (Taylor) The organizations the WPA gave rise to later and the things it literally built were leaning more towards long-term recovery. When the WPA was cancelled 1943, the work it had done rather fell apart, and the "$11 million in employment relief" that it spent could be argued to be a waste. (PBS) But its goals endured and led to the creation of institutions such as the "National Foundation for the Arts" (PBS) and the building of a much needed infrastructure that would greatly benefit America. (Taylor)

• I would absolutely say that the WPA was a liberal program, because it very much encouraged government interference into the affairs of the poor and needy in order to give them the help they should request of it.