Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act to shift federal relief toward paid work rather than direct cash aid. The law provided major funding for work relief and set the legal basis for creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration by executive order. The WPA’s central goal was to employ jobless but able workers on “useful” public projects, working through partnerships with state and local agencies.
The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) began to employ out-of-work writers and editors. Beyond job creation, it also built a large public record through local histories, interviews, and publications that documented American life in the 1930s.
Soon after the WPA’s creation, it sponsored “Federal Project Number One,” a group of arts and cultural programs. These projects aimed to employ artists, musicians, writers, and theater workers as workers—treating creative labor as part of economic relief.
The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) started as a WPA program to reemploy theater professionals and bring performances to communities. It created regional companies and staged productions nationwide, expanding public access to live theater during the Depression.
The Federal Art Project opened as the WPA’s major visual-arts program. It paid artists and craftspeople to create murals, posters, and other public artworks, and it also helped build community art centers that offered exhibitions and classes.
As the economy struggled, WPA rolls grew and reached their highest levels in the late 1930s. At peak, the program employed more than 3.3 million people at one time, showing both the scale of unemployment and the federal commitment to work relief.
Harry Hopkins, a key architect of New Deal relief, stepped down after leading the WPA through its formative years. Leadership shifted to Francis C. Harrington, and the WPA continued but faced growing political pressure and changing national priorities.
After investigations and controversy, Congress terminated the FTP’s federal support. The closure marked a turning point for WPA cultural work: arts programs became more politically contested and, in many places, had to rely more on state and local sponsorship.
A federal reorganization placed the WPA within the new Federal Works Agency and changed its name to the Work Projects Administration. The mission of employing people on public projects stayed largely the same, but the change reflected an effort to reshape and manage New Deal programs as budgets tightened.
FWP fieldworkers collected interviews and local accounts that captured how ordinary people experienced hard times, migration, and work. This documentation work—alongside guidebooks and other publications—became a lasting historical record even as the WPA’s main purpose remained employment relief.
By 1943, wartime production had greatly reduced unemployment, and Congress ended the WPA. Over its lifetime, the program employed more than 8.5 million people on roughly 1.4 million public projects, leaving a large legacy of built infrastructure and public cultural work.
Works Progress Administration (WPA) (United States, 1935–1943)