Some i0,000,000 unemployed were soon in competition for about 2,000,000 jobs. The Administration's policy was to take one-half of those employed from the relief rolls, the other half from the unemployed regardless of severity of need. The program lacked any real administrative organization, either Federal, State, or local. Everything was done in a hurry and with a minimum of planning. Within two months the rumblings of discontent had started in all parts of the country. There were accusations of graft, political favouritism, improper expense accounts, collusion in purchasing materials, and the like. The Federal Administrator admitted he was "tremendously disconcerted" and appealed to the Attorney General and War Department for aid in getting the sit uation under control. Moreover, the costs mounted far beyond expectations. The Federal Government had been spending about $40,000,000 a month for direct and work relief ; the CWA cost alone was soon above $200,000,000 a month. On Jan. 15, 1934, weekly hours were cut ; a few weeks later, wage rates ; then quotas were reduced, and on March 31, the program came to an end, with the exception of odds and ends that could not be terminated at once. The dramatic but poorly organized CWA showed conclu sively how not to relieve unemployment. Its dissolution was fol lowed by a return to direct relief and local work relief, with a gradual expansion of public works as the PWA program got under way.
"From its beginning in July 1933 to the end of 1937, the Public Works Administration financed the construction of nearly 16,00o Federal public works projects and 10,500 projects for State, local, and commercial agencies." (PWA and Industry, United States Department of Labor, Bulletin 658.) The value of contracts awarded in the four years following June 1933, was nearly $3,700, 000,000, a substantial share of which was provided by State and local agencies. Over $1,200,000,000 of these expenditures were for public buildings, $700,000,000 for roads, over $450,000,000 for water and sewerage systems, and $360,000,000 for flood control. In Aug. 1934, when the program was at its peak, some 630,00o men were at work at the site of these projects and over 6o,000,000 man hours were worked that month. The orders for materials for these projects amounted to over $1,700,000,000 in the four-year period mentioned—a substantial block of business for the mate rials industries. In addition, the workers on these projects bought more heavily for family consumption than if they had been idle or on relief. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that the expenditure of $1,000,000 at the site of such works created two and-a-half times as much demand for off-site labour as for labour at the site. (PWA and Industry, op. cit.) The next important development came in the summer of 1935, when the Works Progress Administration was established. Work relief on a large scale had been carried on by State and local gov ernments (aided by subsidies from FERA funds) from the end of CWA until the Federal Government launched its colossal work re lief program in 1935, swallowing the local work relief activities. In May 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced by execu tive order the establishment of WPA, which "should be responsi ble to the President for the honest, efficient, speedy, and co-ordi nated execution of the work relief program as a whole, and for the execution of that program in such manner as to move from the relief rolls to work on such projects or in private employment the maximum number of persons in the shortest time possible."
The WPA, in contra-distinction from PWA, was distinctly an agency of relief. Persons (except a limited number of adminis trative employees and strategically necessary skilled workers) had to be certified as in need of relief by the local relief authori ties in order to be eligible for WPA work. Their hourly rate on WPA had to be the local prevailing rate for the occupation in which they were working for WPA, but their monthly earnings were limited to a "monthly security wage." Though the program was required to provide socially useful products and services for society, its primary purpose was to relieve need and at the same time to conserve the skills, character, and work habits of unem ployed wage earners. It differed from most of the work relief ac tivities carried on by other nations in providing work opportuni ties for all classes of unemployed—for engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, barbers, musicians, accountants, etc., as well as for skilled and unskilled manual labour. At its peak on June 25, 1938, the WPA employed 3,424,000 people.
The engineering, business, administrative, and personnel prob lems involved in handling work relief for the unemployed on such a scale were most difficult. It is not strange that the program re ceived much criticism ; the remarkable thing is that it was able to operate with as little waste, graft, and political chicanery. The final step in the American unemployment policies of the '3os was the enactment of the Social Security Act in Aug. 1935, which quickly brought about a nation-wide system of unemployment insurance covering the vast majority of wage earners. (See UN EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE; RELIEF; PUBLIC WORKS.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Sir W. H. Beveridge, Unemployment; a Problem of Industry (1920 and 193o) ; A. C. Pigou, Unemployment; Ronald C. Davison, British Unemployment Policy Since 1930 (1938) ; J. A. Hob son, The Economics of Unemployment (1922) ; F. Lavington, The Trade Cycle (1922) ; The Third Winter of Unemployment, ed. by W. T. Layton (1923) ; Hon. J. J. Astor, Is Unemployment Inevitable? (1924) ; A. C. C. Hill, Jr. and Isador Lubin, The British Attack on Unemployment (5934). See also—Ministry of Labour: Report on Na tional Unemployment Insurance (1923) ; International Labour Office: Unemployment in its National and International Aspects (1924) ; and General Problems of Social Insurance (1925) ; Unemployment Insur ance in Great Britain, a Critical Examination (1925) ; Harry Jerome, Mechanization in Industry (1934) ; J. Parker Bursk, Seasonal Varia tions in Employment in Manufacturing Industries (1931) ; C. J. Ratzlaff, The Scandinavian Unemployment Relief Program (1934) Ralph Hurlin and Wm. Beveridge, Employment Statistics for the United States (1926) ; John D. Millett, The Works Progress Ad ministration in New York City (1938) ; Reports on Public Assistance of the Advisory Council, Oswald Knauth (chairman), and of the Re search Staff, Don D. Lescohier (director), Works Progress Administra tion, New York city ; National Bureau of Economic Research, Business Cycles and Unemployment (1923) . The Works Progress Administra tion, Washington, has published many reports on unemployment, par ticularly technological unemployment. The International Labour Re view, British Labour Gazette, and Monthly Labor Review publish cur rent data. (D. D. L.)