WPA

my granpappy always said that the WPA programs stood for WE PIDDLE AROUND
typical government work, five guys leaning on shovels, one guy working.

My Dad talk about his experience in the CCC and they worked hard. The project he talked about most was cutting stairs into the rock in Wind Cave Natl. Park in the South Dakota Black Hills. We took the tour a back in the 1970s and he was so proud when we would climb over the sections that he and his crews worked on. There is good work to be gotten from these programs, lots of ponds around here built by the WPA too.
Tom

Naw--it stood for "We poke along!"
There was a portable out-house, a bunch of guys, with one going, one coming back, two waiting, three leaning on shovels, watching, and one foreman asleep in the wheel-barrow!

I agree with you tlrich. My dad quit school after seventh grade, to work on the WPA, because my granddad had a hernia and could not work. That was welfare then, and if you didn't show up you didn't get paid. My dad was no slacker and could work hard all day long. He also spent some time in the CCC. If they only had this kind of welfare today, instead of staying home making babies and getting a check each month.

These guys can poke fun at the programs all they want but, most likely none of the tongue flappers could have done the work some of the old boys did.

My dad was a railroader later on. He would work as a track man all day long, come home and change his clothes, then go work in the garden until after dark. He never forgot that he only went to seventh grade, though. The rail road offered him a job as supervisor of his crew- I can't remember the title but, he turned it down because he was worried he wouldn't be able to keep everyones hours and pay right. I guess he would have to account for what they should get, not sure.

I was ready to quit school once when he came home, I told him so. He didn't say a word but went to change his clothes. He called me out in the hallway, after he was done. He handed me the jeans he had worn that day. They must have weighed twenty pounds from sweat. He said, "that's why you need to go to school". Lesson learned.

Funny thing I have noticed over the years, utility workers standing around doing nothing.
No one complains, but it affects our utility bill.

As far as the WPA, they built a lot of roads, did a lot of work building small dams etc. The guys that did their best to get out of work were called gold-brickers. I don't know where this term came from, just remember my Dad using that term.

Several years have gone by, and we still have "gold-brickers". My Dad was a hard worker all his life and I suspect that he worked hard during the WPA days.

How many of us now days would like to spend several days on the business end of a shovel handle??

My grandfather use to jokeingly say it ment Whopps, Polocks and Americans, Dont know if I spelled them right.He was 98 years old and just died Wedensday ironicelly. Hope no one gets offended.

I travel the mid west a lot for my job. Mostly on gravel and two lane back roads. Thousands of old bridges have "CCC" and the date cut into the stone. Regardless of how hard they worked, they slept in barracks', marched, drilled, and ate like the army and pretty much roughed it. I don't care if they did lean on the shovel some.

It beats the welfare class now that sets on the sofa in the projects, eating chips and watching their flat screen TVs while the 8 kids run around in dirty diapers that I paid for.

My two cents worth.


Gene

tlrich,,,WOW,,iv been in that cave and yes they told us on the tour that the cement was carried down in buckets as a WPA project,,,,AND,,That concrete look as if it had just been poured a week earlier,,,no sunshine and no frost i suppose,,,,and also a very interesting cave

i think my granpappy was the one shovel that was working, and thats why he talked down on them.

All three bridges on our road have the WPA stamp.

And every last one of them is still holding up well. Say what you want, but they sure knew how to lay concrete and iron.

Just watch the old movies of WPA work. No One standing around. They were happy to have a job. It was a different time and those folks had a much different mind set than today. Those folks were hungry. How many fat guys do you see in the old movies?? Watch them building the Hoover Dam. They worked in places a billy goat would not go!!! Thank God for the WPA & the TVA.

Listen to someone besides Rush Limbaugh and his clones. The high school in my town which is still in use is a WPA project and is still in use today. Not only were laboring men put to work, but also architects who drew up a beautiful Art-Deco design with a real gym , a beautiful auditorium with a balcony, and tile floors throughout. Everyday of school I was proud to walk by the bronze plaque which read Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States and Harry Hopkins, WPA Administrator.

WPA sounds better then giving away like they are now.

Agreed , everthing built here by WPA is of Sound lasting Quality ,, the get to work programs of the WPA were better and helped the rite folks . MORE than the Nusance no econ sense crap that PELflopsi and the Pres are gonna do in this modern age of CRONYISM..

A lot of bridges, roads, and state parks were CCC or WPA projects. Built the infrastructure to win the war. And we are still using it today.

I just posted above on this subject before I got to read all this. It is my belief that those kind of things made our country great. Every had a chance to work if they wanted to. Henry

The WPA built the Grade School in my Mom's home town of Bradfordsville Ky.Two story with 4 large class rooms,running water and flush toilets ,lunch room with kitchen and a nice gym for basketball.It is used now for community functions and a senior center.River rocks and local timber were used in it's construction. Saw a picture of a school in Ga. built by the WPA in one of my Fox Fire Books.Looks just like the one in Bradfordsville.

The Grandfather of a friend of mine told stories of working on those projects. He said times were so tough that all he had to carry for lunch was mustard green sandwiches, day after day the same thing till one day a new fellow showed up and had his lunch in a sack just like his except his looked heavier. When break time came he ran and got ahead of everyone else and switched sacks and hid in a culvert and opened the sack only to find 12 hickory nuts and a claw hammer.

There are some great stories on this thread. I hope some of you will stand up and be counted when the right wing Limbaugh types try to defame the memory of Franklin Roosevelt by saying the New Deal didn't alleviate human suffering. FDR is probably the greatest man of the 20th century.

history speaks for the past, Limbaugh speaks for the future.

Some say it prolonged the ecconomic issues, tho putting some to work at the time, it made it tougher for all for a longer time.

Some say it started the social ills that we have in this country. The attitudes of some, perhaps extremely represented by Octo-mom. Givme givme.

I suppose the turth is somewhere in between. It helped some, hurt others.

--->Paul

While outside this morning shoveling horse manure, I got to thinking about some of the cheap shots leveled here at the WPA, CC, and by implication—some of the current stimulus activity. It occurred to me that the people making estimates like “half hour to grease a wheelbarrow wheel” or extensive time leaning on a shovel are not likely to have been too close to the handle of either a shovel or a wheelbarrow.
I was born in 1941 so I have no direct knowledge of either WPA or CCC. However, my father had a job in the 1930’s on a WPA project. This job was in a limestone quarry where rock was being crushed and then hauled/spread to make all weather road surfaces in their township in western Wisconsin. Although this seems like a worthwhile project, it also does not sound like a cushy job. As the depression had hit agriculture well before 1929, the opportunity to earn any cash money was much appreciated by him.
Any “cure” to a serious problem is likely to have some undesirable side effects. Go and read the side of your pill bottles or the flyer that comes with a prescription. Rush, and the cadre backing him for sainthood, seem to comprehend about half of “loyal opposition”. It is not enough to just say what will not work. Improvements and or better alternatives need to be proposed. WPA and CCC certainly had shortcomings and inefficiencies, but I think that they were a lot better than an alternative such as doing nothing.

I always got mixed signals on FDR when I was growing up- My dad was a staunch nnalert, but was anti-union, and said FDR and his social programs ruined the country. It was all very confusing.