American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA : When FDR Put the Nation to Work by Nick Taylor Page A
Authors: Nick Taylor
Tags: United States, General, History, 20th Century, Political Science, Business & Economics, Politics, Careers, Job Hunting, Economic Policy, Public Policy, Job creation, Job creation - United States - History - 20th century
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defensiveness, he projected confidence. The battered fedora, the grin, the upthrust chin, the cigarette holder pointing skyward like an exclamation point, the words that embraced the people’s yearnings—all this rebutted Hoover’s baleful accusations. The “new deal” of his acceptance speech had captured what the country sought; specifics could wait. Three years of depression were enough.
The people spoke on election day, November 8. Roosevelt compiled a massive victory, 22,825,016 votes to Hoover’s 15,758,397: a 57 to 39 percent margin in the popular vote. The margin was even more pronounced in the electoral college, where he won 472 votes to Hoover’s fifty-nine. Democrats also rolled up big majorities in both the House and Senate.
Voters had paid scant attention to the candidates of the far left. Socialist Norman Thomas, still the favorite of many intellectuals, failed to break 900,000 in the count. William Z. Foster, the Communist Party candidate, lost by a much wider margin. His feeble showing of just 102,221 votes belied the concern, expressed in countless headlines and official statements after the Ford and Bonus Army debacles, that Communism was eating at the country’s very foundations.
Clearly Americans wanted no part of a government that ran their lives, but in sweeping Roosevelt to victory, they were demanding that it pay attention to their needs. For the millions of the unemployed, that meant one thing only: jobs.
But these would not come soon. Roosevelt would not be inaugurated president until March 4, 1933. This four-month lag between November and March was the vestige of a long-vanished time, before airplanes permitted half the country to be traveled in a day and the telephone, telegraph, and radio transmitted information instantly from coast to coast. Thus for these endless months Hoover remained in the White House, sullenly defending his rejected policies, even as vast numbers of people with no work and no resources faced the deepening winter with impatience, anxiety, and hunger.
PART II
HOPE ON THE RISE
Work-Is-What-I-Want-and-Not-Charity.
Who-Will-Help-Me-Get-a-Job.
— SIGN HELD BY A JOBLESS WORKER
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.
— FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT IN HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1933
1. JOBS FROM THE SKY (AND NOWHERE ELSE)
O n December 7, 1932, one month after the election, the temperature in New York City reached a springlike 62 degrees. Better-off New Yorkers undoubtedly enjoyed the unexpected warmth, but men without jobs at the approach of winter prayed for snow. Two days later it appeared their prayers were answered. The temperature dropped to 30 degrees, and on December 10 the season’s first real snow began to fall. Fifteen thousand jobless men waited for the call to clean the city’s streets, but the uncooperative skies dropped a mere two inches and left them disappointed. The next week, things improved. A daylong blizzard dropped half a foot of snow and this time, street bosses handed out shovels to 20,000 men for two days’ worth of work at 50 cents an hour. Men in suits and overcoats joined laborers in work clothes, all bending to their shoveling not just in New York but in cities up and down the snow-blessed eastern seaboard.
Across the country in Los Angeles, the city council was trying to pry money from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to create some public works jobs. It had been almost six months since Hoover had reluctantly opened the business loan program to state and local governments. Many had filed applications, but most of these were tied up in Washington red tape; of the $300 million set aside for public sector relief loans, a mere $30 million had been granted. But even if they had been approved quickly it would not have made much difference, for the money was inadequate. The Los Angeles application, for example, would cover only ten days’ work for 14,000 men.
For most jobless workers, there were not even these faint
The people spoke on election day, November 8. Roosevelt compiled a massive victory, 22,825,016 votes to Hoover’s 15,758,397: a 57 to 39 percent margin in the popular vote. The margin was even more pronounced in the electoral college, where he won 472 votes to Hoover’s fifty-nine. Democrats also rolled up big majorities in both the House and Senate.
Voters had paid scant attention to the candidates of the far left. Socialist Norman Thomas, still the favorite of many intellectuals, failed to break 900,000 in the count. William Z. Foster, the Communist Party candidate, lost by a much wider margin. His feeble showing of just 102,221 votes belied the concern, expressed in countless headlines and official statements after the Ford and Bonus Army debacles, that Communism was eating at the country’s very foundations.
Clearly Americans wanted no part of a government that ran their lives, but in sweeping Roosevelt to victory, they were demanding that it pay attention to their needs. For the millions of the unemployed, that meant one thing only: jobs.
But these would not come soon. Roosevelt would not be inaugurated president until March 4, 1933. This four-month lag between November and March was the vestige of a long-vanished time, before airplanes permitted half the country to be traveled in a day and the telephone, telegraph, and radio transmitted information instantly from coast to coast. Thus for these endless months Hoover remained in the White House, sullenly defending his rejected policies, even as vast numbers of people with no work and no resources faced the deepening winter with impatience, anxiety, and hunger.
PART II
HOPE ON THE RISE
Work-Is-What-I-Want-and-Not-Charity.
Who-Will-Help-Me-Get-a-Job.
— SIGN HELD BY A JOBLESS WORKER
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.
— FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT IN HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1933
1. JOBS FROM THE SKY (AND NOWHERE ELSE)
O n December 7, 1932, one month after the election, the temperature in New York City reached a springlike 62 degrees. Better-off New Yorkers undoubtedly enjoyed the unexpected warmth, but men without jobs at the approach of winter prayed for snow. Two days later it appeared their prayers were answered. The temperature dropped to 30 degrees, and on December 10 the season’s first real snow began to fall. Fifteen thousand jobless men waited for the call to clean the city’s streets, but the uncooperative skies dropped a mere two inches and left them disappointed. The next week, things improved. A daylong blizzard dropped half a foot of snow and this time, street bosses handed out shovels to 20,000 men for two days’ worth of work at 50 cents an hour. Men in suits and overcoats joined laborers in work clothes, all bending to their shoveling not just in New York but in cities up and down the snow-blessed eastern seaboard.
Across the country in Los Angeles, the city council was trying to pry money from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to create some public works jobs. It had been almost six months since Hoover had reluctantly opened the business loan program to state and local governments. Many had filed applications, but most of these were tied up in Washington red tape; of the $300 million set aside for public sector relief loans, a mere $30 million had been granted. But even if they had been approved quickly it would not have made much difference, for the money was inadequate. The Los Angeles application, for example, would cover only ten days’ work for 14,000 men.
For most jobless workers, there were not even these faint
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