8. The Public Works Administration was a successful federal program
When the NRA was determined to be unconstitutional in 1935, the PWA (which until then had been known as the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) continued in operation. Under the PWA, federal projects were proposed and planned by the federal government and then let out to private contractors for completion. Under the PWA and through federal funding, schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, dams, and other infrastructure were built throughout the country, providing jobs and stimulating private investment and spending. During its first six years of existence the PWA both funded and oversaw over 34,000 construction projects ranging from the paving of streets to the building of New York City’s Lincoln Tunnel. It built scores of airports, several dams, and several bridges, including the Overseas Highway which connected Key West to the mainland.
The PWA is sometimes confused with another New Deal agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA worked with local communities on considerably smaller projects and unlike the PWA paid the workers on its projects directly, rather than through private contractors. The WPA hired its workers directly, and worked with local communities on projects such as parks, community buildings, roads, and sewers. Eventually the WPA employed eight and a half million people before near full employment in 1943 led to it being terminated. The WPA also administered a program called Federal Project Number One to provide employment to artists and actors, musicians and writers, and others such as historians, because, in the immortal words of Roosevelt advisor and close friend Harry Hopkins, “Hell, they’ve got to eat too”.