Public Works Administration

The Good and Bad of the New Deal Work Relief Agency

Jan 13, 2010
William L. Wunder

PWA site in Washington DC, 1933 - Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum

The PWA provided work relief jobs and new infrastructure but its slowness in arranging construction projects reduced its economic impact.

As one "lung" of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the PWA was to provide economic stimulus through construction projects. The other "lung" of the NIRA, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), would provide the regulatory codes to reduce cutthroat competition. It was hoped that these two lungs would breathe new life into the beleagured industrial economy.

Infrastructure

With $3.3 billion in initial funds, the PWA had several ways to distribute the money:

Initiate its own projects as a construction agency.
Shift funds to other federal agencies with their own construction projects.
Offer a combination of loans and grants to state and local governments for nonfederal projects.
Make loans to private corporations.

PWA funds impacted the whole nation economically and socially. It built roads and highways (ex. Florida Keys overseas highway), sewage systems (Chicago's), water systems (Denver's), gas and electric plants, schools (buildings at University of Washington), courthouses, hospitals, jails, dams and locks (Mississippi River Valley), reclamation and irrigation projects, bridges (Triborough in New York), levee and flood control projects (Muskingum Valley in Ohio), tunnels (Lincoln Tunnel in New York), and airports (La Guardia in New York).

The military was also impacted. The PWA helped rebuild the Navy with the construction of the aircraft carriers Yorktown and Enterprise, four cruisers, four heavy destroyers, many light destroyers, submarines, planes, engines, and instruments. The PWA also built 32 Army posts, 50 military airports, and planes for the Air Corps.

The PWA's impact is seen in the numbers. From 1933 to 1939, it supplied about a billion and three-fourths man-hours of labor at construction sites and another 3 billion hours of work in the production, fabrication, and transportation of materials. The PWA helped build:

70% of the country's new educational buildings.
65% of courthouses, city halls, and sewage plants.
35% of hospitals and public health facilities.
10% of all roads, bridges, subways, and other transportation structures.

Harold Ickes

However, the PWA had its problems. The slowness in getting projects started was a major obstacle. Not only did the PWA had to conduct engineering surveys, blueprints, cost analyses, legal actions, and advertisements for bids, its chief, Harold Ickes, agonizingly went through each project proposal with a fine-toothed comb. Ickes was determined to prevent waste and fraud and even hired a staff of investigators who tapped phones of suspicious contractors and PWA employees.

Ickes' deliberateness and goals for the PWA were at odds with others on the Public Works Board in Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Hugh Johnson, head of the NRA, saw the PWA as an industrial stimulus. Harry Hopkins, head of the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration, saw the PWA as work relief. Conservative Lewis Douglas saw it as a waste of money. Ickes saw the PWA as a builder of durable and meaningful public monuments.

As a consequence of the cross-purposes and slowness of the PWA, industry and employment did not rebound to the level some had wished. From 1932 to 1935, only 700,000 jobs had been created. One out of five were still unemployed by 1935. Former President Herbert Hoover emphatically made this point in a radio address, stressing that employment was not even near pre-stock market crash levels.

But the Public Works Administration's contribution to the minor economic recovery of 1933-1937 can be detected. FDR's budget slashing of the PWA in 1937, among other factors, caused the 1937 recession, highlighting the PWA's positive impact. Overall, the PWA, even with its bureaucratic sluggishness, offered needed work relief for desperate individuals and strengthened the nation's infrastructure.