Yeoman's in the Fork Blog

The Works Progress Administration (also known as The Works Program Administration or WPA) was implemented by Franklin D Roosevelt as part of his New Deal to bring useful work to the millions of victims of the Great Depression. With an original allocation of $4.8 billion, over 3.4 million people were employed by March 1936 doing a variety of jobs, including the construction of public buildings and roads, slum clearance, reforestation, and rural rehabilitation. Particularly interesting were the special programs: The Federal Arts Project gave unemployed artists the opportunity to decorate hundreds of post offices, schools, and other public buildings with murals, canvases, and sculptures; musicians organized symphony orchestras and community singing. The Federal Theatre Project experimented with untried modes, and scores of stock companies toured the country with repertories of old and new plays, thus bringing drama to communities where it had been known only through the radio. The Federal Writers' Project prepared state and regional guide books, organized archives, indexed newspapers, and conducted useful sociological and historical investigations. Writers were employed in each state as part of the Federal Writers' Project to gather information for volumes in the American Guide Series or for local guides and histories. The WPA sponsored nationwide library demonstration projects. Books were rebound, library service to rural and African-American citizens was enhanced, bookmobile and “packhorse librarian” services were initiated, and libraries were started or expanded. So while the WPA was terminated in 1943, its revolutionary impact is still felt today.

Recently, a customer came in wanting to sell several old books they had run across. The Alexandre Dumas book Camille published in 1890 might not be considered a monumental find, but what caught our attention was the small plate on the inside front cover declaring it was part of the Iowa Craft Project in Des Moines, Iowa's Works Progress Administration! You never know what you're going to find!

Waiting for the bookmobile

Interior View of a WPA library bookmobile in Clark County, Ohio. Cumberland County, North Carolina bookmobile

Michelle Peppard

Categoried under:  History