The Seeds of the WPA Planted

On November 8, 1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced plans to create the new Civil Works Administration  which, he said, would provide up to 4 million jobs for the unemployed while doing important work building roads, bridges, sewer lines, and other infrastructure.  In a 5 month run over the winter of 1933-34 over a billion dollars was spent putting people to work.

The basic idea was improved and expanded upon as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded by Congress in the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935.  The WPA was on its way to becoming the single biggest program of the New Deal under the personal supervision of FDR’s most trusted aid, Harry Hopkins.

Unlike the companion Civilian Conservation Corps, which was designed for younger workers, many of them single, to get them out of the cities where they might otherwise become idling malcontents and easy prey to Reds and agitators, the WPA was aimed squarely at economic heads of households to provide employment where they lived.  This meant that the overwhelming majority of enrollees were men.  Where women were enrolled, their husbands were typically absent, disabled, elderly, or had been unable to find work in at least 5 years.

To counter concerns by the labor movement that public employment would undercut union wages, pay was figured on an adjustable scale dependent on whether the area was urban or rural, local cost of living, and prevailing wages.  To counter employer fears that workers would never leave government jobs when private employment picked up, workers were limited to 30 hours per week.  In the work-starved Depression years, that meant a WPA job meant a livable, but not generous support for families.

After some early stumbles, Blacks, Native Americans, and other minorities were represented at or above their percentage of the workforce.  In the South, however, work gangs were segregated, more advanced jobs limited or forbidden to Blacks, and wages unequal. 

The originally conceived public works projects changed the face of America transforming both the urban environment and a road system that at the beginning of the Depression was still built for the horse and wagon.  By June of 1941 the WPA reported that over $4 billion was spent on highway, road, and street projects; more than $1 billion on public buildings; and more than $1 billion on publicly owned or operated utilities.

But the range of work undertaken was astonishing.  Women were employed in sewing projects that produced uniforms for the CCC and military.  There were programs to distribute surplus commodities and provide school lunches.  A popular program built libraries and provided library services, including bookmobiles to underserved rural and urban areas.

One of the most controversial aspects of the WPA was its programs to provide work for the white collar unemployed, as well as laborers.  WPA projects employed engineers, draftsmen, accountants and bookkeepers, lawyers, and supervisors as needed.  Teachers were employed in pilot education projects and to train workers in job skills.  Most controversial were the programs to provide work for writers, visual and dramatic artists. 

The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) employed thousands of writers, including many of minority and working class origin, on a wide range of projects, the most famous of which were The State Guidebooks.  These books were assembled for each state and territory and included comprehensive reviews of the history, geography, economic development, and ethnography of each state.  The books were printed in uniform editions by the states.  Today they are considered invaluable recourses for any researcher.

Likewise the Federal Art Project (FAP) employed artists to produce more than 200,000 separate works including posters, murals and paintings.  The art, particularly the murals, installed in public buildings, schools, libraries, train stations and elsewhere helped transform public space.  Many works are still considered classic treasures.  Others have been destroyed by demolition of the building they were in or were mutilated by renovation and being painted over.  Today WPA art is being re-discovered, treasured, and restored in many places where it has been found.

Artists and writers naturally comment on the world around them.  Although the majority of work by both projects was apolitical, many efforts vocally supported the labor movement, exposed racial injustice, and advocated for the rights of women.  These voices were bitterly denounced by conservatives who waged a relentless, but unsuccessful campaign to defund these WPA agencies.

Conservatives also decried many of the public works projects as “unnecessary make work” and accused WPA workers of “shovel leaning” and other “laziness.”

Despite these criticisms by the time that the WPA was ended in 1943 amid the essential full employment caused by World War II, it had spent a staggering for the times $11 billion.  It was the largest single employer in the country.  In the peak year of 1938, it employed 3.3 million people—nearly every person eligible under the program’s guide lines. It has been called the most successful of all New Deal programs not only for putting people back to work, but for the transformative legacy of its public works projects.

Getting’ Sentimental for When All Republicans Weren’t Bat Shit Crazy

Dirksen honored for passing Civil Rights legislation.

The Republican National Convention last week was a sad display of raging paranoia, delusion, projection, and unbridled sociopathic behavior.  Blissfully unaware of how they were looking to ordinary Americans, they forged relentlessly ahead convinced that they had found the secret formula to defeating the Power of Darkness a/k/a Barack Obama.  Most Americans not already infected with the same delusions, even those who had scarcely been paying attention before, looked at the freak show and uttered a collective yuck.

A good way to see just how far the modern Republican Party has gone off the rails in the direction of populist neo-fascist theocracy is to review the career of Illinois Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, a self-proclaimed party conservative who died on September 7, 1969 having served nearly 19 years including 10 years as Senate Minority Leader. 

Dirksen and his fraternal twin brother were born on his parent’s farm near downstate Pekin, Illinois on January 4, 1896.  His parents were both German immigrants and his father, like most Midwestern Germans, was a staunch Republican.  He named his son in honor the legendary orator Edward Everett and President William McKinley. 

The boy was educated in local schools and attended the University of Minnesota Law School before dropping out to enlist in the Army during World War I.  He served in France as a second lieutenant of artillery.

After the war he returned to Pekin and took up private business.  His political career began with election to the city council in 1927.  He had his eye on bigger things.  He failed to win the GOP nomination for the House of Representatives in 1930, but won both nomination and election in 1932.

Dirksen entered Congress as a minority Republican in the Democratic landslide that brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House.  Despite the ingrained conservatism of a small town businessman, Dirksen recognized the severity of the national emergency of the Great Depression and supported much, but not all, of F.D.R.’s New Deal legislation despite pressure from party leaders.  It marked a willingness to work across party lines that was the hallmark of his long career.

Roosevelt, however, could not rely on the Illinois Congressman for support as he steered the country to support of the Allies in World War II.  Dirksen was an ardent isolationist in the mold of one of his most influential political supporters, Col. Robert R. McCormack, publisher of the Chicago Tribune.  He showed his considerable skill as a legislative tactician during the debate over Roosevelt’s Lend Lease Act.  He recognized that there were not enough Republican votes to stop passage in the House, but took advantage of sixty-five Democrats leaving the floor for lunch to successfully attach an amendment that gave the Senate and House to power to revoke the President’s authority by a concurring resolution that could be passed by a simple majority in both houses.

Dirksen made an abortive bid for the 1944 Republican Presidential nomination, which observers believed was mostly an attempt to derail the re-nomination of liberal Wendell Willkie or a ploy to get the Vice Presidential nomination.  In any event on the eve of the convention he signaled that he would not be a contender and although he allowed himself to be nominated as a favorite son of Illinois, did not get a single vote.

In 1948, citing an eye ailment that would plague him the rest of his life, Dirksen announced that he would not seek re-election.  He was evidently feeling better in 1950 when he beat incumbent Senator Scott Lucas, the sitting Majority Leader and a key ally of President Harry Truman.  Dirksen campaigned with the help of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy who accused Lucas of being soft on Communism.

Dirksen remained loyal to McCarthy, but tried to convince him to admit to “misstatements” and apologize to avoid censure by the Senate.  When the vote came down, he supported McCarthy while privately acknowledging that his friend had, “lost his senses.”

Even as a freshman Dirksen quickly became a power in the Senate where he was known for his 19th Century style florid oratory, deceptively folksy demeanor, and considerable skill at building legislative coalitions.  By 1952 he was well enough thought of to be the voice of Mid Western conservatives at the Republican National Convention in support of Senator Robert Taft of Ohio and against Dwight Eisenhower.  In a blistering speech to the convention he went directly after Eisenhower’s biggest supporter, former two time nominee Thomas E. Dewey.  Pointing at Dewey on the floor he thundered, “Don't take us down the path to defeat again!” to a mixed chorus of boos and cheers.

Dirksen, however, dutifully supported Eisenhower that fall and soon became his most reliable ally in the Senate, a tribute to the practicality of both men.

When the Senate reorganized in 1959, Dirksen was elected Minority Leader over more liberal John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, but he moved quickly to heal rifts between wings of the party and molded a solid caucus.  As John F. Kennedy came to the Presidency, he became the face of the Republican Party, along with House Minority Leader Charles Halleck of Indiana.   Their weekly joint news conference, dubbed the Ev and Charley Show, became goldmine of television sound bites, usually featuring Dirksen’s folksy wit.  His weathered face, mop of unruly curls, and distinctive voice made him a regular on Meet the Press and Face the Nation.

Dirksen became famous for his quips such as, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money,” when talking about the budget and his story of two Quaker ladies discussing taxes, “Don’t tax me, don’t tax thee, tax the fellow behind the tree.”

Although a moderate conservative on economic policy and an anti-Communist hawk in foreign affairs, Dirksen, in the tradition of Illinois Republicans, was passionate about civil rights.  Working across the aisle with Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, he was critical in rounding up Republican votes to break filibusters against both the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and the Open Housing Act of 1968.

Reversing his traditional isolationism, Dirksen became an early supporter of the War in Vietnam.  His advice to his old Senate friend Lyndon B. Johnson was said to be critical to Johnson’s decision not only to continue Kennedy’s commitment of troops there, but to dramatically escalate the war against his own nagging doubts.

Dirksen recorded several spoken word albums.  A single from one of them The Gallant Men became an unexpected radio hit and earned him a Grammy.

The Senator was also famous for his passion for the common marigold and his frequent attempts to have the hardy plant name the national flower.  He waxed eloquent about the topic at a drop of a hat.

Dirksen died of complications following surgery for lung cancer at Walter Reed Army Hospital at the age of 77.  He was so well thought of by his Senate colleagues that they re-named the main Senate office building in his honor.  The new 1972 Federal Court Building in Chicago was also named for him.  His portrait hangs in honor in the Illinois State Capitol and a bronze statue stands on the lawn.

MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton Roust the Bonus Army

Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur consults with his cavalry commander, Major George S. Patton, center as tear  gas envelopes the Bonus Army on Pennsylvania Avenue.  MacArhur's aide, Colonel Dwight Eisenhower on the right with his back to the camera. 

The streets are a little less full this summer as the Occupy Movement adjusts and re-assesses.  But the upcoming conventions of both political parties will likely result in mass direct action.  Meanwhile around the world literally millions are taking to the streets to protests austerity (Greece, Italy, and Spain,) for democratic reform (Bahrain and Egypt,) attacks on education (Quebec and increasingly the rest of Canada,) and against an apparently stolen election (Mexico.)

It may be news to you that the nations on both of our boarders are in such turmoil.  The American mass media, as if instructed to down play it to avoid contagion, have barely reported the dramatic events. 

In the U.S. we slide into an election season with a bitterly divided population and an oligarchy out of control as the economy bumps along the bottom of a very long depression.  It is a recipe for eventually brining mass protests back to our streets.

Today is the anniversary of one of the most important mass protests in American history being crushed by military force.  This is a bit of historical trivia that was never more relevant.

On July 28, 1932 Washington, D.C. became a battle zone when President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to clear out veterans, their families and supporters who had been camped since June pressing demands for an early payment of a bonus promised to World War I soldiers. 

It was nearly four years into the Great Depression with no relief from an almost total economic collapse in sight.  True unemployment was estimated to be nearing 25% with no safety net other than voluntary soup kitchens.  Tens of thousands of small businesses had failed dropping once solid citizens into poverty.  Farm income had collapsed.  Across the board, conditions were bleak. 

Veterans of the Great War were still relatively young men, most in their early 30s.  They had been welcomed home as heroes.  Despite the inevitable post-traumatic stresses of any war’s aftermath, most had married and were raising families when disaster struck.  Largely able bodied and well disciplined, they were perhaps the most employable men in America.  But many, very many, were in desperate shape that summer. 

In 1924 under pressure from veterans’ organizations, especially the American Legion, Congress had passed the Adjusted Service Certificate Law over the strenuous objections of President Calvin Coolidge.  Vets had been issued 3,662,374 bonus certificates, the face amount determined by a formula of how many days each soldier served in the U.S. with a greater payment for each day overseas.  The maximum amount due was $500 for domestic service up to $650 payable when the certificates matured in twenty years—1945. 

Although veterans were allowed to borrow against a percentage of that sum—eventually raised to 50%, the money had to be repaid with interest. 

Congress financed the scheme with annual appropriations of more than $12 million to fund the 1945 payments which were expected to be more than $3.5 billion.  Loans paid out against the certificates had already placed the fund in the red. 

None the less, in face of the dire emergency leading figures like popular retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler began advocating for an immediate early payment of the bonus certificates. 

Democratic Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, then in the second term of his long career, introduced a bill to authorize the payments.  It was ardently opposed by the President and Republicans in Congress. 

Hoover, a Quaker, had risen politically largely on his reputations as The Great Humanitarian for his work feeding starving European civilians in the wake of the war.  He was the only engineer until Jimmy Carter to be elected President, a man of meticulous attention to detail, a deep attachment to Republican laissez faire economic philosophy, and a practically physical revulsion of “disorder.”  He had responded to the Depression with cheerleading, rosy predictions for recovery, expressed sympathy for those affected but a firm belief that they were on their own and that the Federal Government had no Constitutional responsibility to them.  More concerned with the holy writ of a balance budget, he urged spending be slashed—a policy that not only did not help but actually deepened the Depression.  Naturally Hoover and unified Republicans railed against the proposed Patman Act as a budget buster.

The Bonus Expeditionary Force was organized by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant in the AEF—American Expeditionary Force—in World War I, to descend in mass on Washington to pressure Congress to pass the Patman Act.  Veterans and their families from all over the country, but mostly from the East, responded to the call arriving in the city on June 17 as the Senate took up the bill, which had already cleared the House. 

Senate Republicans blocked action on the bill and the Bonus Marchers settled into makeshift camps, nick named Hoovervilles.  Although the shabby camps were assembled from what tents could be obtained and junk scavenged from scrap yards, the veteran leaders exercised military discipline.  They were laid out in orderly streets, sanitation facilities were dug and maintained, common kitchens established, and camps patrolled by volunteer M.P.s.  Men had to register producing evidence of honorable discharge to be admitted and were each expected to do duty keeping the camps clean, orderly and secure.  The men responded to daily  reveille and held regular parades.  American flags were prominent.

The veterans were very concerned that the public see them as loyal patriots.  And by in large, despite being denounced as dangerous Communists in the most conservative press, the public was at least sympathetic to them. 

Over 17,000 men enrolled. Their wives and children plus some approved volunteer supporters—especially nurses and medical personnel—swelled the camps to a total population of over 40,000.  The main camp was laid out on the mud flats and boggy ground by the Anacostia River across from the core of the city. 

Marchers gathered daily for orderly demonstrations near the Capital.  By late July it was evident that the Republicans in the Senate would not budge and that the Patman Act was doomed.  Acting on direction of the President, Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered District Police to “evacuate the city” of bonus marchers on the morning of July 28. 

Veteran leaders were taken by surprise by a police charge and the men resisted.  Ill trained police responded by emptying their revolvers into the crowd killing two men outright and injuring dozens.  Enraged, the veterans fought back, pelting police with rocks, bricks and anything else they could lay their hands on.  A few may have had handguns and fired back or fired with weapons taken from disarmed officers.  Police were forced to withdraw with nearly 70 men injured.  The veterans remained on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Learning of the failure of the police, Hoover ordered the Army to take action.  Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, in dress uniform and festooned with every decoration he ever received, decided to take personal command.  As commander of the famed Rainbow Division made up of National Guard units, many of the veterans in the streets had served under him. 

MacArthur deployed two full regiments, the 12th Infantry, and the 3rd Cavalry supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton.  The Army arrived on the scene about 4:30 as Federal employees were leaving their offices.  MacArthur, with his aide Major Dwight Eisenhower at his side, ordered his troops to advance. 

At first many of the veterans were glad to see their brother soldiers.  Some believed that they had arrived to protect them from the police, others said they thought the advance at first was a parade in their honor.  Then Patton ordered his cavalry to charge, sabers drawn.  As the horrified witnesses from surrounding office buildings screamed “Shame, Shame!” the cavalry crashed into the thick mass of veterans.  As the veterans reeled back toward their camps, the infantry came up with bayonets fixed.  Using adamsite gas, an arsenic based gas inducing violent vomiting, the troops began to clear the camps.  Women, children, and civilian volunteers alike were swept up. 

Against the President’s explicit order, MacArthur crossed the Anacostia into the vast main camp.  Tents and huts were put to the torch, destroying all of the personal positions of the veterans and their families.  Survivors, including many injured, were scattered into the country side where local law enforcement personnel hectored them for days as they tried to find ways to get home.

In the end at least four veterans, including two of their leaders, William Hushka and Eric Carlson were killed and an estimated 1,017 injured.  Most historians agree that both of those figures are low because many of the injured were either unable to get medical treatment or afraid to seek it.  In addition one woman suffered a miscarriage and an infant was killed.  Again historians, believe, based on eye witness accounts, that other children, especially infants were killed or died later as result of the gas. 

Within a week newsreel footage of the attack was being played in every movie theater in the country.  Public outrage played a big part in the defeat of Hoover for re-election that November. 

But if veterans thought that Franklin D. Roosevelt would support payment of the Bonus, they were wrong.  Roosevelt wanted to use money for other projects and for direct relief.  But F.D.R. was not about to make the same mistake as Hoover when a smaller Bonus Army appeared in the summer of 1933.  Instead to sending in the Army, he sent Eleanor, who brought tea to the veterans and urged them to instead enlist in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). 

Hundreds took her up on the proposal and were put to work building the causeway road to Key West, Florida.  When the Labor Day hurricane on September 2, 1935 killed 258 veterans working on the Highway, public sentiment again swung behind the veterans’ demand. 

In 1936 Congress over-rode Roosevelt’s veto to finally authorize the early payment of the promised bonus. 

After World War II the G.I. Bill with its promises of immediate money for education or a home purchase was enacted specifically in response to the plight of World War I vets.

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom called by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies was inspired by the Bonus Marchers.  His 1968 plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, which included a camp of protesters, were even more evocative.  The Campaign, conducted after King’s murder, was not dispersed by troops.

Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Today is International Human Rights Day which commemorates the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly meeting at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948.  The vote was 48 ayes, 0 nays and 8 abstentions.  The abstentions came from the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian and Belorussian S.S.R.s, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as South Africa, and Saudi Arabia.

The Declaration was an outgrowth of the bitter lessons of World War II and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms which had become the foundation and promise of the alliance against the Axis Powers known at the United Nations.  As the war drew to a close, the United Nations was Chartered as new international body to replace the failed League of Nations.  From the beginning codifying international standards for rights was a priority.

Canadian legal scholar John Peters Humphrey, Director of the Division of Human Rights within the United Nations Secretariat, was selected as the principle writer.  He worked closely with a commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, a tireless advocate for a strong declaration.  Members of the commission were selected from a representative cross section of UN members—Australia, Belgium, Byelorussia, Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Lebanon, Panama, Philippine, United Kingdom, U.SA, Soviet Union, Uruguay and Yugoslavia.   

Humphrey produced a draft which became the working document with details to be haggled over.  Besides Mrs. Roosevelt,   Jacques Maritain , René Cassin and Stéphane Hessel all of France; and Charles Malik, a Lebanese Christian;  and China’s P. C. Chang played leading roles in working over Humphrey’s texts.

There were numerous struggles in the commission, particularly over objections of Islamic countries over the rights of women, marriage, and the freedom to change one’s religions.  The Soviet Union and its allies and vassal states fought furiously against enshrining individual liberties “at the expense of common necessity.” And conservative Western governments we just as adamantly opposed to including social, economic, and cultural rights.  Mrs. Roosevelt played a key role in patching over differences and coming to a conclusion.

None the less, after months of work within the commission the General Assembly debated almost every point and held more than 1,400 votes on virtually every word and clause in the document before it was ready for a final vote of approval.

In 1966 the UN General Assembly adopted two detailed additional Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and on Civil and Political Rights, which were ratified by sufficient numbers of member states by 1975 to become international law.  The Universal Declaration of Human rights along with the two covenants are now considered the International Bill of Rights.

The documents, taken together, are important in and of themselves.  But in practice member nations have seldom been willing to challenge the national sovereignty of member states known to be violating the terms of the agreements and perpetrating even the grossest of Human Rights abuses.  

In the midst of a global economic crisis and regional ethnic and religious turmoil, Human Rights are under constant attack.  And the United States, which once proudly proclaimed them, now prefers to cite American exceptionalism for permission to observe them in the breach.  Congress is currently considering measures that could lead to virtual martial law and allow for the indefinite detention of American Citizens and legal immigrants without charge or trial.

May the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt haunt the dreams anyone who collaborates in this effort.