WPA Theatre: The Forgotten History of "Day is Darkness"

Above: Sometimes, it's very hard to find information on a particular WPA play or performance. The history of "Day is Darkness" seems to be almost completely absent from the Web. I could find little or no information on the play, the script, the playwright (George Fess), the director (Adolph Freeman), the sponsor (Boyle Heights Progressive Benevolent Club), or the venue (Ocean Park Municipal Auditorium)--although the latter was apparently demolished, or destroyed by fire, sometime in the 1970s. If anyone has information about this play, please let me know (wpatoday@gmail.com). Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

America's railroads need a New Deal

Above: A train on the Pennsylvania Railroad. According to an article on the website of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, the New Deal's Public Works Administration electrified the "Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Washington, D.C." Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Above: A brochure produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, states that the construction of the Cape Cod Canal (or, "Buzzard's Bay") Railroad Bridge "began in December of 1933" and was "authorized under the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 as part of the federal government's efforts to put Americans back to work during the Great Depression." Photo taken in 2006, by Kevin Burke, public domain, courtesy of Wikipedia.

A friend of mine recently told me that America's passenger rail system, when compared to the passenger rail systems of other developed countries, is...well...less-than-impressive (another friend told me the same thing about America's bus system, as compared to South Korea's...there seems to be a recurring theme here). Michael Grunwald, Time Magazine's national senior correspondent, agrees: "America’s passenger rail is a global joke, but our freight rail is the envy of the world..." ("Back on Tracks," Time, July 9, 2012).

However, even our freight railroad systems could use some upgrading here and there. For example, in Martinez, California, a trestle bridge is worrying local residents. Apparently, when trains cross the bridge (with very dangerous cargo, by the way) the locals hear "loud creaks and rattles" coming from its century-old, rusty bridge supports. Hmmm...yes, that might be a cause for some degree of concern. ("Aging Railway Infrastructure Raises Safety Concerns As Bay Area Readies To Receive Dramatic Increase Of Bakken Crude Oil, Part 1 Of 3," CBS Sf Bay Area, December 29, 2014).

Above: From a distance, this train bridge / car tunnel in Cumberland, Maryland, doesn't look so bad, right? Photo by Brent McKee, December 2014.

Above: But a closer look reveals plenty of crumbles and cracks. Photos by Brent McKee, December 2014.

While doing better than some of our other infrastructure systems, America's railroads still only garnered a C+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2013. The ASCE reported that the passenger and freight rail industry were doing a good job of investing in infrastructure but, with respect to the passenger rail system, federal assistance to that investment only averaged "$1.50 per American per year" and that "Long-term funding is uncertain, as Amtrak’s capital funding is planned over a long-term period but must be given a prescribed yearly funding level under its own bill in Congress." Considering that our dysfunctional Congress has recently become even more dysfunctional, I'd say that "funding is uncertain" is an understatement.

Amtrak also receives state-level funding, but many state revenue systems are also dysfunctional. Hence, with both federal and state governments in disarray, at least one historic Amtrak route seems to be in danger of elimination (see "Lawmakers seek funds to save Southwest Chief route," The Santa Fe New Mexican, January 21, 2015). 

U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Barbara Mikulski are trying to bolster America's railroads (as well as the rest of our infrastructure) with their "Rebuild America Act." Commenting on the bill, Sanders said, "Every day, [the American people] drive on roads with unforgiving potholes, over bridges that are in disrepair and wait in traffic jams on congested roads. They see railroads and subways that arrive late and that are overcrowded. They see airports bursting at the seams. They worry that a local levee could fail in a storm" ("Sen. Sanders files $1T infrastructure bill," The Hill, January 27, 2015, emphasis added).

Unfortunately, with Republicans now in complete control of Congress, the "Rebuild America Act" faces less chance of survival than a goldfish dropped into an aquarium full of snakeheads. Republicans have made it clear that they do not like the idea of investing in America's infrastructure (see yesterday's blog post). Our only hope is that the Koch brothers will order their employees (a.k.a., Republican and Tea Party politicians) to support the bill. But I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

New Deal policymakers understood the value of America's infrastructure, and invested heavily in it. With respect to railroads, for example, WPA workers built many railway tunnels and, "Through the cooperation of the Railroad Retirement Board, many WPA workers were hired on railroad track jobs" (The Final Report on the WPA Program, pp. 53 and 93.)

America's railroad infrastructure needs a New Deal...or, in the absence of a New Deal, Congress could at least pass the Sanders and Mikulski "Rebuild America Act." 

Above: The experimental steam locomotive "Pennsylvania Railroad S1," or "The Big Engine," on display at the New York World's Fair in 1939. According to the S1's Wikipedia entry, the Art Deco-style locomotive was a joint effort of "the Pennsylvania Railroad, Baldwin Locomotive Works, the Lima Locomotive Works and the American Locomotive Company." The Great Depression was a tough time for the railroads but, as the "The Big Engine" demonstrates, there was still optimism about the future...and the New Deal helped keep that optimism alive. For example, according to Dr. J. Parker Lamb, a loan from the Public Works Administration helped the Gulf, Mobile and Northern Railroad purchase "two streamlined diesel-powered passenger trains...that would brilliantly mark [Ike] Tigrett's growing reputation as a forward thinker in the rail industry" (Railroads of Meridian, p. 66, Indiana University Press, 2012). Photo above courtesy of Wikipedia.

A 90-year-old water main breaks in Prince George's County, Maryland, and almost drowns a family. A WPA could have prevented that.

(In the video above, we see a water main break, "nearly costing a family its lives," in Prince George's County, Maryland, on Tuesday, January 27, 2015. Original YouTube link here.)

A water main installed in 1924--when Calvin Coolidge was the president of the United States--broke in Bladensburg, Maryland (Prince George's County) yesterday, severely damaging a road, flooding basements, and almost drowning a family in their car as it slowly sank into a water-filled sinkhole.

The break occurred yesterday at 3:30am, and the Associated Press reports that "Area residents, including one barefoot woman, could be seen carrying garbage bags full of their belongings from their homes in freezing morning temperatures" ("Family's car swallowed by giant sinkhole after Bladensburg water main break," ABC 7, January 27, 2015).

The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) reports that the incident "was the 375th broken or leaking water main to need repair in their service area since Jan. 1." The WSSC's service area includes parts of both Montgomery and Prince George's Counties. At this pace, they'll have well over 4,000 broke or leaking water mains to repair this year. And we know that the numbers across the country will go well into the hundreds of thousands (see "Drinking Water," 2013 Infrastructure Report Card, American Society of Civil Engineers).   

If we had a new WPA, to hire and train some of the 22 million Americans who want a full-time job but can't find one, things like this could be prevented. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA installed 124 miles of new water lines in Maryland, and 16,000 miles of new water lines across the country. The Public Works Administration, another New Deal program, funded many other waterworks improvements in Maryland and the nation. 

Make no mistake about it: New Deal investment in infrastructure was massive. Today, however, the story is quite different. With Republicans spending most of their time trying to secure tax breaks for the super-wealthy, and trying to deregulate our fraud-ridden financial sector, there is little hope for improving America's infrastructure. As Time Magazine's senior national correspondent wrote last year, "no matter how much Republicans say they care about infrastructure, they’re not going to accept any infrastructure proposals that come from President Barack Obama...Republicans say nice things about infrastructure but haven’t shown any interest in paying for it. As a result, the nation has failed to take advantage of historically low interest rates to invest more in our overcrowded airports, outdated railways and flimsy bridges."

(Also see "Senate GOP blocks $60B Obama infrastructure plan," Associated Press, USA Today, November 3, 2011, "The Stunning Collapse of Infrastructure Spending in One Chart," ThinkProgress, November 1, 2013, and "Will America's Roads and Highways Ever Get Fixed," CBS News, January 27, 2015)

Meanwhile, some on the political right tell us that concerns about crumbling infrastructure are just ginned-up and nothing more than "scare tactics." I wonder if the family in Bladensburg, Maryland thought--as their car was dropping into the sinkhole--"No need to worry, this is probably just a scare tactic by those gosh-dern, big government liberals!"  

The New Deal's PWAP: A proliferation of public art!

(Administrative staff and regional directors for the Public Works of Art Project. Photo from the "Public Works of Art Project, Report of the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to Federal Emergency Relief Administrator, December 8, 1933 - June 30, 1934" (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934).

The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was just one of the many New Deal programs created to beautify America. In the PWAP program, unemployed artists made art for buildings and parks. Here are just some of their accomplishments during the 6-month program (December 8, 1933 to May 20, 1934):

7 Navajo blankets

9 bas reliefs

42 frescoes

43 pieces of Pueblo pottery

54 portraits

99 carvings

314 drawings

405 mural designs

647 sculptures

1,076 etchings

2,938 water color paintings

3,821 oil paintings

(Statistics from the report noted in the photo caption above)

Considering the extraordinarily dull nature of our public designs today (e.g., boring buildings, constrained colors, bland bridges, and prosaic parks), wouldn't it be great to have another Public Works of Art Project? Imagine a statue of a famous American being placed in your city or town park, or bas reliefs being added to a nearby bridge, or murals painted inside your post office and town hall. We could do it! 

....were it not for the lifeless, cynical policymakers that we are plagued with today.

Art from the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project

("Fishermen," an oil painting by Ross E. Moffett.)

("Negro Mother and Child," a bronze statue by Maurice Glickman.)

("Young worker," an oil painting by Julius Bloch.)

The above images are from the Public Works of Art Project, Report of the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to Federal Emergency Relief Administrator, December 8, 1933 - June 30, 1934 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934). The report states that "The Public Works of Art Project was set up under the Treasury Department for supervision, as one of the agencies to extend relief to the professional class, its object being to employ artists who were unemployed in the decoration of public buildings and parks." The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was a short-lived New Deal program, lasting from December 8, 1933 until May 20, 1934 (the end date on the report--June 30, 1934--reflects the end of the government's fiscal year). The spirit of the PWAP would live on in other New Deal programs and agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration.

Why We Need A New Deal Museum (part 10 of 10): Because so many people don't know the history of the New Deal

(This town hall in Williamsport, Maryland was built with the assistance of WPA labor. Across the nation, WPA workers engaged in over 125,000 projects to build, repair, or improve public buildings. Photo by Brent McKee.)

Have you ever noticed that there are tons and tons of television documentaries about things like the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Roman civilization...but hardly any on the Works Progress Administration?

Why is that? After all, as one prominent researcher back in the day highlighted: "Considered as a single unit, the total volume of WPA employment, during the first six years of its history, is sufficient to stagger even a wild imagination. By contrast, the estimated number of man-years required to build the pyramids of Egypt--which have long been symbolic of giant undertakings--looks small" (Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy, p. 531, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943).

More recently, Andrea Stone, writing for the Smithsonian, noted that "the WPA remains the largest public works program in the nation's history. It provided 8 million jobs in communities large and small. And what those workers put up has never been matched" ("When America Invested in Infrastructure, These Beautiful Landmarks Were the Result," December 10, 2014). Further, the Living New Deal project is showing us that a lot of "what those workers put up" is still being utilized today.

Indeed, I would argue that the WPA was the largest public works program in human history if one takes into account not only the infrastructure accomplishments, e.g., 650,000 miles of new or improved roadways, but also the history collected, the artwork created, the education classes conducted, the plays & symphonies performed, the health clinics operated, the school lunches distributed, and so on.

Yet, I would bet that if you stopped 10 random people on the street and asked them, "What was the Works Progress Administration?" you would be lucky to find just one or two who knows.

And it isn't just the WPA that is unknown, it's the entire New Deal. In the years that I have researched the New Deal, and interacted with people during various New Deal "expeditions" (i.e., visiting & searching for New Deal sites), I have noticed that many people have barely even heard of some of the New Deal programs & policies. For example, when I visited the headquarters of Green Ridge State Forest, in western Maryland, I asked if they had any information about the CCC, or if any structures might still exist from the time the CCC worked there. The front desk person, looking perplexed, responded that she didn't have any information on the CCR. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I meant the Civilian Conservation Corps, not Creedence Clearwater Revival. I don't mean this story to sound uppity because, before I took it upon myself to do the research, I really didn't know much about the New Deal either.

(Between 1933 and 1942, CCC workers planted about 3 billion trees and created or improved about 800 parks. The CCC workers above are building a retaining wall in Ohio, in September of 1936. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and the New Deal Network.)

We know, from listening to policy debates, as well as reading the comment sections under Internet news stories, that an awful lot of people don't realize how beneficial New Deal programs & policies are to their daily lives, for example, FDIC protection of their bank accounts, WPA-built recreational facilities, and union-negotiated pensions.

Out of curiosity, I asked a young adult relative of mine if she learned about the New Deal in school. She said, "not really." She recalled a mention of the CCC, but certainly not the WPA. Remembering my own education, I really can't remember any mention of the New Deal at all (it was probably covered, just not in any great detail like, say, the Civil War).

What gives? Why do so many Americans lack a good understanding of the New Deal, and why aren't schools & colleges emphasizing it more? One college official recently said, "We don’t mandate every single student take a class in American history…so you may find a senior not knowing the specifics of the New Deal. But you will graduate knowing how to think and how to accumulate that knowledge and make connections between things" ("Study Finds Many Colleges Don’t Require Core Subjects Like History, Government," Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2014).

I think politics is behind some of it. There are many people who hate the United States government and wouldn't mind if the history of its positive accomplishments was blotted out altogether. Some of these people no doubt end up in positions where they influence curriculum development and course offerings (to see an example of how politics can influence curriculum development, see "After Protests Over History Curriculum, School Board Tries To Compromise," NPR, October 3, 2014). And some of it probably stems from our nation's belittling of K-12 history, gym, and art, in favor of a greater emphasis on math and science (which is probably why our nation not only has a history-knowledge problem, but also an obesity problem). Further, many well-educated and well-intentioned adults simply don't know a lot about the New Deal themselves, and so a transference of information can't occur.

(New Deal policymakers understood that things like history, recreation, and art were important for a well-rounded citizenry. Today, it seems that these activities often take a back seat (if they have any seat at all) to rote learning and standardized testing. See, e.g., "Many schools cutting back on physical education," Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 14, 2013. WPA poster, image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.) 

It's pretty outrageous that we don't do more to educate people about the New Deal --and it's also pretty disrespectful to our elders & ancestors. The New Deal consisted of millions of people who created a vast infrastructure of roads, bridges, parks, schools, waterlines, etc., and then went off to serve in the military or defense industries during the largest conflict in human history (an estimated 60 million people died during World War II, including over 400,000 Americans). Our elders & ancestors worked, fought, and sometimes died, to protect the freedom we have today to enjoy the things they created for us then. But we have not returned that favor--to the fullest--by thoroughly educating our youth about the New Deal and/or by creating a large & comprehensive New Deal museum dedicated to their many astounding accomplishments during the 1930s and early 1940s.

Isn't it time that changed?

Why We Need A New Deal Museum (part 9 of 10): A place to put our books, booklets, and bulletins

(WPA poster, image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)

(WPA writers created many interesting books, such as this one about "The Ocean Highway" (1938). The book covers the history of many places along the Atlantic ocean route, from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Jacksonville, Florida. Image scanned from personal collection.)

 (In the WPA's 1941 "Guide to the United States Naval Academy," the superintendent of the Academy wrote "This book fills a long felt want in providing the public with authentic information and attractive pictures of the Academy. I feel that its publication at this time is most fortunate. Rarely have there been so many and such interested visitors at the Academy. Image scanned from personal collection.)

In the book American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, author Nick Taylor informs us that WPA writers created "at least 276 full-length books and 701 pamphlets." There are countless other publications, which we might variably call "booklets," "bulletins," "reports," etc. Currently, these publications are scattered all across the country. Wouldn't it be nice to have a New Deal museum, where all these thousands of items could be centrally located in a library / research center. Wouldn't it be nice to pull an old book off the shelf (a book about your hometown or state), go into a reading room, kick back in a recliner (yes, a recliner in a library, imagine that), and immerse yourself in another world for a few hours?

A New Deal museum could do that for you! (while also preserving, and perhaps even evaluating, the huge amounts of information and data collected by New Deal writers during the 1930s and early 1940s).