Why Can’t the Government Resurrect ‘Workfare’ Programs Like the WPA?

Question: Some of FDR’s Great Depression financial recovery and unemployment strategies included the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration, both of which left important legacies evident still today. There is great dignity in work. Couldn’t we resurrect similar workfare programs today to upgrade our deteriorating infrastructure, rather than just continue to issue unemployment checks?

Paul Solman: It’s funny that your email comes from Palatine, Ms. Artrip. Back in the mid-1960s, I worked for the American Jewish Society for Service. The teenagers in my “care” were doing community service at a summer camp in Palatine for inner city Chicago kids. Though the teens’ parents paid to send their children to the program, the great dignity of work, especially work for those who couldn’t afford it, was the whole point.

We’ve reported several times on FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), most successfully (I thought) in a story from St. Louis last year.

Full disclosure: my dad, the artist Joseph Solman, worked for the WPA in the so-called “easel project” from 1935 to 1940. He and my mom looked back on those days with pride and joy. The pay was $100 a month — at least $1500 a month in 2010 dollars, using the Measuring Worth Web site. Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Isabel Bishop, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Thomas Hart Benton and Stuart Davis were among the many others in the WPA Art Project.

As for the Civilian Conservation Core, it was more like our work in Palatine back in the 60s. Pay was half that of the WPA but some 3 million Americans were in the program at one time or another, mainly working outdoors on public projects. The program was for unemployed men 18-24. Wikipedia has an extensive entry on the CCC. I’m surprised it hasn’t been revived.