A clip from a short government film about the the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal programs started during the Great Depression.

Uploaded by YouTube user: FasttrackHistory, 30 January 2009

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From The Progressive, posted 27 October 2009, by Julianne Malveaux:

[snip]

By [1932] the Great Depression was raging, with unemployment rates rising to 25 percent.

To combat unemployment and alleviate poverty, the federal government engaged in a massive public works and jobs program through the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Private markets weren’t about to create jobs, and the public sector became the employer of last resort. The job creation from the WPA provided survival and sustenance for millions of American families. Where is the contemporary WPA?

Absent public job creation, it is likely that the economy will not fully recover…

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Related on Past in Print:

Hey Obama, while you’re at it, bring back the CCC

From TheDailyBeast.com, posted 28 September 2009:

When they see footage in Michael Moore’s new film of FDR announcing his Second Bill of Rights, many Americans will wonder whatever happened to it. Harvey J. Kaye explains why we should honor his vision.

Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, not only takes on corporate power and greed in America. By featuring rarely seen footage of FDR calling for a “Second Bill of Rights” in January 1944 and of the Flint, Michigan, sit-down strikers fighting for their rights in 1937, the film also challenges our political passivity with the democratic ideals and struggles that made the men and women of the 1930s and 1940s the most progressive generation in American history. Conservatives and libertarians have rightly tried to portray Roosevelt and his New Dealers as revolutionaries. In the best American sense of the term, they were…

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From Talking Points Memo, 19 February 2009 post, by Robert Reich:

The stock market reached a six-year low today. Why? Some blame loose talk (including that of former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan) about nationalizing the nation’s banks. Others blame Obama’s new plan for helping homeowners who may not be able to pay their mortgages. But the real culprit is the accelerating decline in aggregate demand — consumers, businesses, and exports. Companies are losing money because their customers are disappearing. That’s precisely why the stimulus is so important — indeed, why many of us fear it’s too small.

One of the oddest of right-wing claims is that FDR’s New Deal didn’t pull America out of the Great Depression, so Barack Obama’s “New New Deal” won’t, either. While it’s true that the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression, three points need to be impressed on the hard-pressed conservative mind…

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Contrary to the anti-government myths and ideology-driven arguments of certain conservatives and mainstream corporate media, the facts show FDR’s New Deal quickly brought rapid growth to the nation’s economy during the Great Depression.

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