New Deal Accomplishments

Above: Historian Bonnie Fox Schwartz notes that 300,000 women were employed in the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA) by the spring of 1934. However, this was a small percentage of total CWA employment (about 4 million) and led CWA chief Harry Hopkins to remark, "We haven't been particularly successful in work for women" (Schwartz, The Civil Works Administration, 1933-1934 (1984), p. 179). 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: In February 1935, more than 200,000 women were employed in the CWA's successor agency, the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). This was a smaller raw number, but a higher percentage of total jobs (about 11.8%, compared to the CWA's 7.5%). Statistics and photo from the Work Division's final report , pp. 85 an...

Above:  "The Indian Weaver," an oil painting by Ann Louise Snider (1899-1973), created while she was in the WPA, between 1935 and 1943.  Image from the General Services Administration and the Kern County Library (Bakersfield, California). Above: A project assisted by the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1933-1934.  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: WPA workers making rugs and other textiles in Spokane, Washington, December 1935. Photo from the National Archives . Above: Previously-unemployed women now working for the Cooperative Handicrafts, Inc., in Puerto Rico, ca. 1938, a cooperative assisted by the New Deal's Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA). Assistance to cooperatives was one of the main concerns of PRRA - see Geoff G. Burrows, The Puerto Rico Rec...

Above: The WPA constructed the "Municipal Skating Rink" in Laramie, Wyoming. The WPA contributed $8,299 to this project, and local funds amounted to $3,864 (about $193,000 and $90,000, respectively, in 2024 dollars). See, "WPA Funds for Skating Rink," The Casper Tribune-Herald (Casper, Wyoming), September 26, 1935, p. 5. Photo from the National Archives . Above: The description for this photograph--taken in Nevada, ca. 1940--reads: "Ice skating at Virginia Lake, a 35 acre artificial lake built by the WPA and sponsored by Washoe County. This recreational area is located less than a mile from the southern city limits of Reno. Equipped with flood lights, the lake affords perfect skating both day and night." Photo from the National Archives . Above: Ice Skating on Culler Lake, in Baker Park, Frederick, Maryland, January 1940. The WPA created the lake, 1938-1939. Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives . Above: Culler Lake in 2011 (phot...