Re: [PEN-L] The USA has become the South

[Eugene Coyle]

The WPA built many things that we enjoy today --- I notice especially the outdoor stuff.  There is a project here in Northern California to rediscover and photograph WPA projects.  Gray Brechin (author of Imperial San Francisco) and pals are doing it.  It will be a book, I think, but not yet finished as far as I know. Gene Coyle Carrol Cox wrote: Eugene Coyle wrote: Who did cripple the WPA / New Deal? First, the PWA was created. (If I remember correctly, the head of PWA was a Republican businessman.) The principle was that _its_ projects would be "financially responsible." The WPA meanwhile was being allowed to gradually sink. Then the war came along and both WPA and PWA were cancelled. The great principle of the WPA was that instead of looking for people who "fit" the available job, jobs were created that _fit_ the people needing work. That could be leaf-raking (leaf-raking was to the WPA what Welfare Queens were to AFDC) or it could be painting the most wonderful murals in post offices or it could be building sidewalks or college buildings. One used to see on sidewalks all over the country "Built by WPA" (or something like that) inscribed in the concrete. The health service building at Western Michigan when I was a student there (1947-51) had been built by the WPA, and that information was inscribed on a foundation block. Actually, I don't think there were any new initiatives from the New Deal after 1938. Arguably any how the 1938 elections mark the beginning of the shift of the DP to the right. Carrol