Relief

One of the prime objectives of the FERA from the very begin ning was the development on a national scale of the system of work programs for employable persons that had been initiated by the more progressive State relief administrations. During the first six months, however, comparatively little was accomplished along this line because of the pressure of the more elementary needs of the unemployed for food, shelter, and clothing. The FERA undertook to see to it that every State had public relief adminis trations in every county, and that relief allowances to families were as adequate as possible. The early State work projects were in some cases poorly conceived, for it took time to realize that there was plenty of work the unemployed could do that would be socially useful and not compete with private industry. Super vision was sometimes poor, and there was generally a shortage of funds for materials, as only local funds—not Federal moneys— could at the beginning be used for that purpose.

The Civil Works Administration, 1933-34.

The deficien cies of the local work relief programs, the critical unemployment situation, and the need of stimulating business recovery by large scale governmental expenditures prompted the President to start a new works program in the fall of 1933. This was the program of the Civil Works Administration, instituted within two weeks after the creation of the agency on Nov. 9, 1933• by the transfer of funds from the Public Works Administration. While the Civil Works program was directly administered by the Federal Govern ment through a nationwide organization, most of the projects were initiated and sponsored by local governments.

Workers were paid on the basis of the work performed rather than on the "budgetary deficiency" basis which characterized local work relief projects.

Within two months of its organization, the Civil Works program reached a peak employment of 4,200,000, roughly half of the workers being taken from the relief rolls. The greater part of the program was terminated at the end of March 1934, although some minor phases were continued until July. The program resulted in total expenditures of $951,600,000, of which the Federal Govern ment contributed $860,400,000, the local communities $85,000,000, and the States the remainder.

Though hastily organized, the Civil Works program for the first time revealed the large variety of socially useful projects that could be operated with unemployed labour. Its field of activity embraced the repair and construction of roads and streets, the rehabilitation and even new construction of school buildings, recreational facilities, the building of new sanitation works, and last, but not least, a wide array of white collar and service projects.

During the period of the CWA program, the FERA continued to function as an agency subsidizing the State relief agencies, al though local work relief programs were very much curtailed. With the discontinuance of the CWA, the FERA, in co-operation with the States, set out to develop a more adequate work relief program than had been in operation in 1933. Those CWA projects which had not been finished were taken over and completed. New proj ects were developed on the same principles. Some of the previous State work relief handicaps were removed. Thus, Federal funds were made available for the purchase of materials ; better super vision of projects was instituted. Employment in this program ranged from I,Ioo,000 in April 1934, to nearly 2,500,000 in Jan. 1935. When the program was in full operation, approximately 45% of all relief cases received work-relief benefits, while the remainder received direct relief.

Wages in the FERA work program were based on the principle of "budgetary deficiency." A relief family's sources of available private income were determined by the social service staff and deducted from the estimated budgetary needs. The principal bread-winner was then given as many hours of work as would yield the requisite income deficiency. In the case of large families, work relief earnings were often supplemented by direct relief. In ad dition to this, surplus foods were sometimes furnished to general relief cases through the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, which was largely financed with FERA funds. (This later became an agency in the Department of Agriculture and was renamed the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation.) In the spring of 1935 Congress and the Administration made an important change in the method of dealing with the problem of unemployment relief. This new method, which was originally em bodied in the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 and which has been continued with but minor changes until the present, involved, first, the turning over of direct relief to the States and local communities and, second, the setting up of a large Federal works program to provide emergency employment, particularly to employable heads of families on relief rolls.