Federal Project Number One Essay

The Success of The Works Project Administration
Federal Project Number One
By Josh Bush

The Works Progress Administration was the most ambitious and largest project of the New Deal. Of all the projects that the Works Progress Administration were responsible for, I believe to be most successful to be the Federal Project Number One. Federal Project Number One, a subdivision of the Works Progress Administration, was established with two goals in mind. The first goal was to gainfully employ the countless actors, artists, musicians, and writers. The second goal was a byproduct of the first and was what I feel made Federal Project Number One so successful; that the art created by these new workers would entertain the nation and enrich it with

The Federal Writers Project (FWP) was hatched in 1934 when the Civil Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration noticed that there were close to two thousand writers in enrolled in their programs, and that without a project suited for them they would be forced to do unskilled manual labor which was hardly befitting of most writers. At its peak the FWP employed upwards of six thousand seven hundred writers nationwide. But what would all these writers write about they must have thought, well, since the whole point of Federal Project Number One was to reaffirm the American spirit; Harry Hopkins, the relief administrator, decided that these writers should write a guidebook to every state. It was understood that after all the state offices were set up, staffed and directors appointed that it would be some time before there were any results to this project. The directors had to issue assignments for the writers, then the writers would consult with historians and other experts before they began to write on each of the books in the American Guide Series. The writers had to wade through a maze of entangled bureaucratic red tape, and that is probably nothing like the political and personal ideals that the Project administrators had to negotiate. There were all types of writers writing for the FWP: there were the beat writers traveling the winding back roads of

There truly is no way to gauge the entire scope of the impact that these projects made. It is well known that they helped usher in a new era of American culture and appreciation of the arts. What is not known is how many people were on the verge of losing all hope in America and even humanity, to be so down on their luck that you cannot provide for their wife or their children. Every day they would sink further into despair because things were never getting better, only worse. Then one day they hear about an orchestra performance that is being held at the local school, maybe it was play at the newly built theater, or they pickup a book that is detailing a place they had always wanted to go, perhaps it was walking by the same wall on the way to the bread line and looking up to notice that there was a beautiful and inspiring mural there now. At that moment, things didn't seem so bad, and it was because of a government funded project. Then there is the other side of the coin. For example suppose there was a man or a woman, and all their life they had been a concert piano player, or maybe a stage actor, perhaps a novelist, or even a portrait painter. It is the height of the Great Depression, they