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The Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects,〔Eric Arnesen, ed. ''Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History'' (2007) vol. 1 p. 1540〕 including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller but more famous project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.〔 Almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP), and in total it spent $13.4 billion.〔Jason Scott Smith, ''Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933–1956'' (2006) p. 87〕 At its peak in 1938, it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs. Full employment, which was reached in 1942 and emerged as a long-term national goal around 1944, was not the WPA's goal. It tried to provide one paid job for all families in which the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment.〔Robert D. Leighninger Jr., ''Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal'' (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 64, 184.〕 Robert D. Leighninger asserts that "The stated goal of public building programs was to end the depression or, at least, alleviate its worst effects. Millions of people needed subsistence incomes. Work relief was preferred over public assistance (the dole) because it maintained self-respect, reinforced the work ethic, and kept skills sharp."〔Leighninger, Robert D. "Cultural Infrastructure: The Legacy of New Deal Public Space." Journal of Architectural Education 49, no. 4 (1996).〕 The WPA was a national program that operated its own projects in cooperation with state and local governments, which provided 10–30% of the costs. Usually the local sponsor provided land and often trucks and supplies, with the WPA responsible for wages (and for the salaries of supervisors, who were not on relief). WPA sometimes took over state and local relief programs that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) or Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) programs.〔D. Leighninger Jr., ''Long-Range Public Investment'' p. 63〕 It was liquidated on June 30, 1943, as a result of low unemployment due to the worker shortage of World War II. The WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years.〔Leighninger Jr., ''Long-Range Public Investment'' p. 71.〕 Most people who needed a job were eligible for at least some of its positions. Hourly wages were typically set to the prevailing wages in each area.〔Bradford A. Lee, "The New Deal Reconsidered," ''The Wilson Quarterly'' 6 (1982): 70.〕 ==Enacting the WPA== Created by the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the WPA was established with the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 by the United States Congress and was largely shaped by Harry Hopkins, close adviser to President Roosevelt. The WPA was initially intended to be an extension of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration work program, which funded projects run by states and cities. Many were for infrastructure, such as bridges, roads and parks, but they also included archeological excavations of significant sites, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), and other historic preservation activities.〔Robert D. Leighninger Jr., ''Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal'', (2007), 56.〕 Both Roosevelt and Hopkins believed that the route to economic recovery and the lessened importance of "the dole" would be in employment programs such as the WPA.〔Leighninger Jr., ''Long-Range Public Investment'', 57.〕 Nick Taylor states that "These ordinary men and women proved to be extraordinary beyond all expectation. They were golden threads woven in national fabric. In this, they shamed the political philosophy that discounted their value and rewarded the one that placed its faith in them, thus fulfilling the founding vision of a government by and for its people. All its people."〔Nick Taylor, ''American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, When FDR Put the Nation to Work'' (New York: Bantam Books, 2008).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Works Progress Administration」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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