Let's remember the Civil Works Administration

(Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)

Harry Hopkins wrote: "Long after the workers of CWA are dead and gone and these hard times forgotten, their effort will be remembered by permanent useful works in every county of every state. People will ride over bridges they made, travel on their highways, attend schools they built, navigate waterways they improved, do their public business in courthouses and state capitols which workers from CWA rescued from disrepair. Constantly expanded and diversified to offer use for the special skills and training of different types of workers, the CWA program finally extended its scope to almost every kind of community activity. We had two hundred thousand CWA projects." (In "Spending to Save," p. 120, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1936)