re: #313 CuriousLurker

What’s WPA?

seriously?

During the Depression, instead of “extended unemployment benefits” Roosevelt came up with the Works Public Administration that invented a gazillion jobs for every possible kind of people — sure there was construction workers doing the TVA and Hoover Dam, but there was also plenty of wilderness work and the arts.

If there’s any national parks near you that have trails cut through the forest, or benches or lovely campsites… the WPA did that. The NYC subway stations have gorgeous mosaics on all the walls, done by the WPA. If you’ve ever read any of the Library of Congress oral histories of the Civil War, old black people remembering what slavery was like when they were children, the WPA did those interviews. All the famous photographs from the 30s, of bread lines or the dust bowl, those were WPA projects.