Direct Assistance and Relief

Economic recovery programs were important, but they took time to take effect, and many Americans needed immediate help. Thus relief efforts and direct job creation were critical parts of the New Deal. Created in the early months of Roosevelt’s term, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) provided cash grants to states to revive their bankrupt relief efforts. Unlike Hoover’s RFC, the FERA did not expect states to repay the loans, but it left administration of the programs to state and local agencies. Roosevelt chose Harry Hopkins, the chief of New York’s relief agency, to head the FERA and distribute its initial $500 million appropriation. On the job for two hours, Hopkins had already spent $5 million. He did not calculate whether a particular plan “would work out in the long run,” because, as he remarked, “people don’t eat in the long run—they eat every day.”

Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior and director of the Public Works Administration (PWA), oversaw efforts to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. Funding architects, engineers, and skilled workers, the PWA built the Grand Coulee, Boulder, and Bonneville dams in the West; the Triborough Bridge in New York City; 70 percent of all new schools constructed between 1933 and 1939; and a variety of municipal buildings, sewage plants, port facilities, and hospitals.

Yet neither the FERA nor the PWA provided enough emergency relief to the millions who faced the winter of 1933–1934 without jobs or the money to heat their homes. In response, Hopkins persuaded Roosevelt to launch a temporary program to help needy Americans get through this difficult period. Both men favored “work relief”—giving people jobs rather than direct welfare payments whenever practical. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) lasted four months, but in that brief time it employed more than 4 million people on about 400,000 projects that built 500,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,500 playgrounds, and 1,000 airports. Montana got its state capitol building renovated, Pittsburgh erected its Cathedral of Learning, Boston’s unemployed teachers went back to their classes, writers and artists remained at their desks and canvases, singers toured the nation, and ninety-four Indians restocked the Kodiak Islands off the coast of Alaska with rabbits.

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See Document 22.2 for a criticism of direct relief assistance.

One of Roosevelt’s most successful relief programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), created shortly after he entered the White House. The CCC recruited unmarried men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five for a two-year stint. It removed them from relief rolls and the glut of the job market and put them to work planting forests; cleaning up beaches, rivers, and parks; and building bridges and dams. To build discipline, the U.S. army ran the CCC, furnished uniforms, and set up military-style camps. Participants received $1 per day, and the government sent $25 of the $30 in monthly wages directly to their families, helping make this the most popular of all New Deal programs. The CCC employed around 2.5 million men and lasted until 1942.