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Article: Works Progress Administration
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the first major unemployment program of the New Deal and one of the most successful of the public works programs authorized by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act in April 1935. The program, under the leadership of Harry Hopkins (1890
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1946), provided about 3 million public sector jobs per year to unemployed heads of families. Most WPA workers built libraries, schools, hospitals, playgrounds, airports, bridges, and roads, but the program also employed writers, actors, musicians, and visual artists at jobs in their fields. The concept that the federal government, and not private industry, should create ...