The WPA and Annapolis National Cemetery

(The national cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland was established in 1862. Photo by Brent McKee.)

(During the 1930s, WPA workers engaged in many projects at the cemetery, for example, realigning headstones. Photo by Brent McKee.)

(WPA workers built this utility building in 1936. Photo by Brent McKee.)

New Deal Art: "Rocky Coast"

Above: "Rocky Coast," an oil painting by Joseph De Martini (1896-1984), created while he was in the WPA's art program, ca. 1939-1940. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

New Horizons

("New Horizons," by WPA artist Harry Francis Mack. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.)

New Deal Art: "Dismissal"

Above: "Dismissal," an oil painting by Howard Taft Lorenz (1906-1956), created while he was in the WPA's art program, 1940. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

New Deal Art: "Family Picnic"

Above: "Family Picnic," an oil painting by Howard Taft Lorenz (1906-1956), created while he was in the WPA's art program, ca. 1935-1943. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

(A closer look at the upper left-hand section of the painting.)

(A closer look at a right-hand section of the painting.)

New Deal Art: A Patriotic Montage

Above: According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this patriotic montage was painted by Walter Beach Humphrey (1892-1966), while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project. The dates given are ca. 1933-1943, but we know that the Federal Art Project did not begin until the latter part of 1935. Also, the plane shown is a B-24 Liberator, which apparently entered service around 1940. So, it's likely that the painting was made while Humphrey was in the "WPA Art Program," the office that coordinated art projects after the Federal Art Project was terminated in 1939; or perhaps even the New Deal's Section of Fine Arts (which had its genesis in the U.S. Treasury in 1934, and ended up in the Public Buildings Administration, 1939-1943). In any event, it's certainly an elaborate piece. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

FDR's preference for government action over philanthropy

(Franklin Roosevelt, 1932. Also pictured is Anna Roosevelt, FDR's daughter, and Francis Carr, a prominent California Democrat. Photo courtesy of the FDR Presidential Library and Museum.)

During a 1932 speech in Detroit, FDR said, "Now, my friends, the philosophy of social justice that I am going to talk about this Sabbath day, the philosophy of social justice through social action, calls definitely, plainly, for the reduction of poverty. And what do we mean when we talk about the reduction of poverty? We mean the reduction of the causes of poverty."

He then highlighted unemployment as a cause of poverty and said, "Some leaders have wisely declared for a system of unemployment insurance throughout this broad land of ours; and we are going to come to it." But FDR also called for the provision of public jobs for the unemployed: "The followers of the philosophy of 'social action for the prevention of poverty' maintain that if we set up a system of justice we shall have small need for the exercise of mere philanthropy. Justice, after all, is the first goal we seek. We believe that when justice has been done individualism will have a greater security to devote the best that individualism itself can give. In other words, my friends, our long-range objective is not a dole, but a job" (emphasis added).

FDR then described the role of government: "And so the State should step in to equalize the burden by providing for a large portion of the care of the victims of poverty and by providing assistance and guidance for local communities. Above and beyond that duty of the States the national Government has a responsibility."

At the time of this speech, FDR was the governor of New York, and he had implemented a work-relief program there (with the assistance of funds made possible, in part, by President Herbert Hoover). Once in the White House, FDR--along with his fellow New Deal policymakers--greatly expanded work-relief, with the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration, and the National Youth Administration. Collectively, these programs hired about 20 million jobless Americans.

Today, when people lose their jobs, our society first refers them to unemployment insurance (assuming they're eligible, not everyone is), and then to the wealthy, to beg for their whimsical philanthropy or their magical "job-creating powers." Missing from the picture is a large government work-relief program, like the WPA, where workers can preserve their skills and earn a small amount of money until they find something better (while also improving the nation's infrastructure, preserving our history, providing social services, etc.). 

One of the main causes of poverty in America today is the absence of work-relief. Those who cry out, in wide-eyed wonder, "free market!" and "personal responsibility!" are utterly ignorant about a key and constant goal of business - the reduction of labor cost, i.e., the reduction of employees. Business men and women, who the free-marketeers worship as "job creators," are always looking for ways to get rid of workers or, at the very least, keep the number of employees as low as possible. Why? Because it's a drain on profits. Therefore, we need to counterbalance that with a work-relief program, so people can have a poverty-free transition from one job to another. FDR mostly understood this. Some of his advisers and administrators during the New Deal, like Harry Hopkins, Louis Howe, Raymond Moley, and Corrington Gill, fully understood it.

Our society today? No, we don't understand it. And we pay dearly for that lack of understanding, in the form of soul-crushing unemployment, homelessness, ruined credit, debt collection harassment, lost homes, and so much more. Unfortunately, we've submitted to the idiots who wring their hands in joy and squeal about the wonders of the holy "free market." Hopefully, a future generation will wake up and fight back.

Hopefully.

FDR on trickle-down economics

(Franklin Roosevelt, photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt said "there are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us."

He then explained the second theory: "if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward..."

Next, he described what was wrong with the first theory--trickle-down economics--by quoting from various Christian groups and leaders of the day: 

"the wealthy are overpaid in sharp contrast with the underpaid masses of the people. The concentration of wealth carries with it a dangerous concentration of power. It leads to conflict and violence... Economists now call attention to the fact that the present distribution of wealth and income, which is so unbrotherly in the light of Christian ethics, is also unscientific in that it does not furnish purchasing power to the masses to balance consumption and production in our machine age."

"It is patent in our days that not alone is wealth accumulated, but immense power and despotic economic domination are concentrated in the hands of a few... This concentration of power has led to a three-fold struggle for domination: First, there is the struggle for dictatorship in the economic sphere itself; then the fierce battle to acquire control of the Government, so that its resources and authority may be abused in the economic struggle, and, finally, the clash between the Governments themselves." (World War II, of course, would soon begin - a war provoked, in part, by poverty, unemployment, and mass income & wealth inequality. 60 million people died in that conflict, perhaps more.)

"We talk of the stabilization of business. What we need is the stabilization of human justice and happiness and the permanent employment of economic policies which will enable us to preserve the essential human values of life amid all the changing aspects of the economic order... We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience..."

New Deal Art: "Young Cat Sleeping"

Above: "Young Cat Sleeping," a lithograph on paper by Mabel Wellington Jack (1899-1975), created while she was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1937. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.