May 5, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: EO 7034

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

On threesignificant elements of theExecutive Order that established WPA.

1)     Building on the Past: While EO 7034 did inmany ways create a new government agency, it didn’t quite do so officially;instead the WPA explicitly took the place of an existing agency, the FederalEmergency Relief Administration (FERA). Partly that shift was to make practicalquestions like leadership and funding for this new organization as smooth andstraightforward as possible; the EO makes clear that “the Federal EmergencyRelief Administrator shall serve also as Administrator of the Works ProgressAdministration,” for example. But I would argue that replacing FERA with WPAwas also quite importantly symbolically, as it reflected the defining andimportant idea that these works projects—including, as we’ll see later in the week,artistic and cultural projects of all types—were part of the government’sDepression relief efforts.

2)     A Focus on Relief: That organizational shiftwas far from the only way in which the EO overtly and centrally linked the WPA tothe concept of relief. Section 3a of the EO notes that one of the WPA’s “powersand duties” will be “to assure that as many of the persons employed on all workprojects as is feasible shall be persons receiving relief.” For the prior twoyears, organizations like FERA and many other early New Deal programs hadfocused on precisely that mission, providing relief of many different kinds toAmericans suffering from the Depression’s catastrophic and widespread effects. TheWPA was one of many programs that became known as the “SecondNew Deal,” but details like the EO’s section 3a illustrate that despitethis evolution, the New Deal would continue to focus on the goal of relief,even (if not especially) through these new projects.

3)     Wages and Working Conditions: Like most ExecutiveOrders, 7034 didn’t go into great detail about specifics, leaving those for thefollow-up work of the WPA (on layers to which, again, the rest of the week’sposts will focus). Which makes one particular specific section very telling: thefifth and final of the “powers and duties,” which authorizes the WPA “toinvestigate wages and working conditions and to make and submit to thePresident such findings as will aid the President in prescribing workingconditions and rates of pay on projects.” That framing is ambiguous enough to allowin the abstract for less than ideal working conditions and wages, of course;but when we remember the FDR was considered in his own era and has been perceivedever since as one of the mostpro-labor presidents in American history, it’s clear that this section wasmeant to give this federal program the ability to guarantee better working conditionsand wages than might otherwise have been possible.

Next WPApost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?