“The American Peasant! WPA’s Gift to Nation.”
— headline on a Clifford Blackburn story on the WPA, Sept. 4, 1938
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Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick famously despised President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal job programs, but the paper gave the successful maid schools a pass — at least for a while. That chivalry ended during the 1938 midterm elections, when reporter Clifford Blackburn wrote a series of scathing stories on the WPA and its “unbelievably ludicrous projects” such as recreation programs, library book rebinding and servant training. In a 25-page rebuttal, the WPA pointed out that Blackburn himself had been fired from the agency for intoxication and felling a tree onto a truck.
* Number of WPA workers at the program’s peak in 1938: 3.3 million. Percentage of the WPA workforce that was female: 13.5
* Average WPA salary: $41.57 a month ($613 in 2008 dollars).
* Miles of highway built or repaired by WPA: 650,000.
Sources: Tribune archives, “American-Made: When FDR Put the Nation to Work” by Nick Taylor, “Daughters of the Great Depression” by Laura Hapke, Time magazine, Oct. 13, 1938.
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nwatkins@tribune.com
