The unemployed built flood walls across the nation to help protect cities & towns from loss of life & property. This flood wall was constructed in Midland, Maryland, in 1937.
(Photo taken by the WPA, provided courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives)
WPA workers cleaning up debris in Cumberland, Maryland, after the St. Patrick's Day Flood of 1936. The WPA--as well as other New Deal agencies--responded to a multitude of natural disasters across America.
(Photo taken by the WPA, provided courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives)
On NBC Nightly News, on Tuesday, October 30, 2012, in a flooded underground train station, anchor Brian Williams was shown interviewing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Williams states (30 seconds into the video): "So, let's talk infrastructure governor. Short of a WPA, short of a Rooseveltian undertaking to rebuild our cities, how do we rebuild our cities, because we can't have this?"
The rest of the interview highlights the notion that natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy, are likely to become more frequent due to climate change. It seems to me that now is a great time to institute a new and permanent WPA to help prepare for natural disasters, help clean up after natural disasters, and help those affected by natural disasters...just like the old WPA did. Why not give the long-term unemployed meaningful and important work opportunities in this age of job outsourcing and high un- and under-employment?
Interesting 11-minute video of the WPA responding to a powerful hurricane in New England in 1938. Video produced by the WPA, provided courtesy of the Internet Archive.
Here's an observation from the Great Depression that reminds me of today's cruelty towards the unemployed:
"The very employers who had thought highly enough of workers to use their services for four, eight, twelve or sixteen years, now began to talk of them openly as lazy fellows or spongers, willing to accept the taxpayers' money. The same persons who had once been moved to sympathy by the pitiful predicament of workers whom they had seen dislodged from regular jobs, now began to lump them all into a general category of the undeserving."
--Harry Hopkins, in "Spending to Save," p. 110, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1936.
