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The Civil Works Administration was established by the New Deal during the Great Depression to create jobs for millions of the unemployed. The jobs were to be merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter. Harry L. Hopkins was put in charge of the organization. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the CWA on November 8, 1933. It was replaced due to the Federal Emergency Relief Act on April 1, 1934.

The CWA created construction jobs, mainly improving or constructing buildings and bridges. In just one year, the CWA cost the government over $1 Billion and was cancelled. So much was spent on this administration because it hired 4 million people and was mostly concerned with paying high wages.

Contents 1 Opposition 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Opposition

The CWA received much opposition from its beginning. One of its biggest critics was Harold Ickes, who regarded the CWA as a gigantic boondoggle and the CWA workers as a bunch of leaf-workers and shovel-leaners. Many other people opposed the CWA, including Al Smith.

Among the masses, it was generally considered a vast, unwieldy, expensive system of Federal work relief for the unemployed that was abandoned quickly.

[edit] See also

• Works Progress Administration
• Civilian Conservation Corps

[edit] References

• Kennedy, David M., Cohen, Lizabeth, Bailey, Thomas A. The American Pageant. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
• Lawson, Don. FDR's New Deal. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974.
• Nardo, Don. The Great Depression. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2000.

[edit] External links

• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Civil Works Administration Photographs 119 images showing work projects in King County, Washington established under the auspices of the Civil Works Administration in 1933-34.