Rebuilding Labor with a New WPA for the 21st Century

Infrastructure built by earlier generations is aging out.

When the American economy collapsed in the early 1930s, it wasn’t just banks that failed. The entire social order buckled. Within three years, one in four workers was unemployed. In some cities, it was half. Factories that had roared through the 1920s fell silent. Farmland withered. Local governments went bankrupt. Families burned their furniture to survive the winter. Men wandered highways and rode boxcars looking for work that didn’t exist.

This was not a recession. It was a national unraveling.

Private credit evaporated. Even profitable businesses couldn’t borrow. Railroads decayed for lack of investment. Schools closed. Bridges collapsed. Public health systems crumbled. America, once a productive industrial nation, suddenly could neither employ its people nor maintain its basic infrastructure.

The “free market” failed and abandoned the American worker.

Into this vacuum stepped the one institution still standing: the federal government. Roosevelt understood that the crisis was not merely economic. Unemployment and underemployment was also destroying the spirit of the people. The country had to rebuild both the productive capacity of industry and provide new opportunities for its people.

Two programs would do that work: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The CCC Saved a Generation of Youth

The CCC was the government’s first intervention. It targeted the group most at risk of losing their future permanently: young men with no work, no prospects and no hope. The CCC gave jobs for unemployed young men and provided them with structure, training, nutrition and purpose. They planted more than 3 billion trees, restored watersheds and built the parks and trail systems that still define much of America’s public landscape.

The CCC restored confidence in a generation that had known only scarcity. It developed their minds with literacy programs, their bodies with regular meals and exercise and their sense of citizenship through national purpose and cooperative work.

The CCC treated the nation’s youth as its most important asset and as an investment in the future.

The WPA Repaired the Country

Two years later, Roosevelt expanded the model through the WPA, which was one of the most ambitious public-works programs in history. The WPA employed more than 8.5 million Americans and touched nearly every county in the United States. (See the Living New Deal Interactive Map.)

The WPA rebuilt a nation that was physically falling apart. Workers paved 650,000 miles of roads, repaired 125,000 public buildings, constructed 8,000 parks and modernized 800 airports. They built schools, water systems, bridges, levees, courthouses, armories and sewers. They restored civic life in places where city halls and community centers had shuttered.

If you turn on a water tap, send a letter, cross a bridge or visit a historic downtown, you are likely benefiting from WPA labor from nearly a century ago. 

The WPA also sought to rebuild the intellectual and cultural life of the country. 

Through Federal Project Number One, the agency funded writers, photographers, musicians, theater companies, cartographers and researchers. It produced oral histories of formerly enslaved Americans, created murals in public schools and mapped communities with scientific precision.

The WPA treated culture and the American mind as a national asset worth investing in.

Why This History Matters Now

The United States is suffering from an insidious decay. Infrastructure built by earlier generations is aging out. Water systems break. Bridges close for safety. The power grid is fragile. Major manufacturing regions have been hollowed out. 

And just like in the 1930s, we see a crisis of demoralization. Many young people are stuck living paycheck to paycheck in unstable gigs, unable to buy a house and start a family and with no connection to national purpose. Skilled trades struggle to recruit. Industrial knowledge is evaporating. Regional inequality deepens. Demoralization spreads.

A nation cannot remain strong when its infrastructure rusts, its industrial base erodes and its people lose faith in the future.

The private market alone will not fix this. It didn’t in the 1930s and it won’t today. Long-term investment in public works, industrial capacity and human development requires national coordination and public credit, precisely what the CCC and WPA provided.

A New Public Works Program for a New Era

We need a 21st-century public works program equal to our challenges. It must do four things at once:

1. Rebuild the worker.Not with slogans but with jobs. Create WPA and CCC-style programs for anyone willing to work. Programs will be paid apprenticeships, technical training, skilled trades pipelines and civic education.

2. Rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.Replace aging bridges, water systems, ports and transmission lines. Expand rail. Modernize airports. Invest in energy generation. Treat public infrastructure as the backbone of national strength.

3. Rebuild industrial sovereignty.Launch a National Machine Tool Reconstruction Act to revive the “mother industry” of manufacturing. Without machine tools, a nation cannot produce advanced goods or defend itself. Public investment must fill the gaps private capital avoids.

4. Use national credit for productive investment instead of speculation, following the Roosevelt approach that built assets still in use generations later.

This blueprint created the Tennessee Valley Authority, electrified rural America and built the postwar industrial boom.

The Lesson of the 1930s: A Harmony of Interest Will Find Solutions 

The CCC and WPA did more than provide paychecks. They restored a sense of purpose in a time of despair. They reminded Americans that their government is only as valuable as it makes the lives of the people better. They proved that democracy can deliver public works on a continental scale.

The lesson is simple. When the market alone fails to sustain the nation, the government of the people must intervene. The question is not whether we can afford a new public works program. The question is whether we can afford not to have one.

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Follow the conversation at https://politicaleconomyproject.substack.com. And check out this interview I did with Dr. June Hopkins who is the granddaughter of Harry Hopkins, an architect of the New Deal and director of the CCC and WPA.