New Deal Accomplishment: Over 1.2 billion free or low-cost school lunches prepared and served


Above: A school lunch in Kentucky, provided by the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA), between 1933 and 1934. Photo from: Henry G. Alsberg, America Fights the Depression: A Photographic Record of the Civil Works Administration, New York: Coward-McCann Publishers, 1934, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: A WPA school lunch in Lawrence County, Tennessee, March 1936. The Final Report on the WPA Program noted that "One of the valuable contributions of the [school lunch] program to community welfare was the establishment, in rural areas, of efficient methods of operation of school lunch rooms and the development of high standards of sanitation in regard to the supply and handling of food and water." Photo from the National Archives.


Above: Children at the Lawrence County school in Tennessee (see previous photo), after their WPA lunch, March 1936. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: This newspaper excerpt highlights the improved health of children receiving WPA school lunches. It is from the article, "WPA Dies With A Clear Conscience," The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia), January 17, 1943, section D, p. 4. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: Ellen Woodward (left), head of the WPA's division of Women's and Professional Projects, visits a school in Washington, DC, during a WPA-provided school lunch, ca. 1936. Part of the description for this photograph reads, "Altogether approximately 8,000 needy school children in 88 public and parochial schools of the District are fed school lunches daily under this program." Photo from the National Archives.
 

Above: WPA workers load soup and sandwiches (made in a central kitchen facility), onto a truck for distribution to schools in Washington, DC, October 1936. The beauty of the WPA service projects was that they hired people who needed jobs... to provide food, clothes, healthcare, and so forth, to people who needed help. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The New Deal's school lunch programs were part of a broad array of services designed to help families and children, as this WPA exhibit in Washington, DC (January 1940), shows. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The service projects committee of the Alabama Federation of Women's Clubs found that WPA school lunches improved the health, attendance, and grades of children (although the grades still needed much improvement). This newspaper excerpt is from The Foley Onlooker (Foley, Alabama), June 30, 1938, p. 3. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: A WPA school lunch display booth at the Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1940. Photo from a WPA report on its activities at the fair.


Above: A student in Portland, Maine, enjoys a WPA school lunch, between 1935 and 1943. Most WPA school lunches were free, but if the family's income was high enough there could be a small charge. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA float for the Peach Day Parade in Box Elder County, Utah, between 1935 and 1943. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA poster, from the WPA's Oklahoma Art Project. Image from the Library of Congress.

Good Food = Good Health

Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA served 1,237,133,100 school lunches.  

Other New Deal agencies served school lunches too. For example, the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) funded at least 7,442 school lunch programs between 1934 and 1935, and the National Youth Administration (NYA) served over 123 million school lunches, although some percentage of these seem to have been part of the overall WPA school lunch program.

If we just use the clearest total--the WPA total--we can say that the New Deal served over 1.2 billion free or low-cost school lunches.

The Final Report on the WPA Program reported that "The lunches were prepared under the general supervision of dietetic experts." This and other evidence--for example, the WPA poster and newspaper clippings shown above--indicate that New Deal lunches were a good deal for kids.

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