{"id":29338,"date":"2016-03-08T01:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T06:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29338"},"modified":"2016-02-27T10:33:35","modified_gmt":"2016-02-27T15:33:35","slug":"qotd-the-civil-works-administration-the-works-progress-administration-and-the-wagner-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/03\/08\/qotd-the-civil-works-administration-the-works-progress-administration-and-the-wagner-act\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Civil Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration and the Wagner Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration in November 1933 and ended it in March 1934, though the unfinished projects were transferred to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Roosevelt had assured Congress in his State of the Union message that any new such program would be abolished within a year. \u201cThe federal government,\u201d said the President, \u201cmust and shall quit this business of relief. I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further stopped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few bits of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves, or picking up papers in the public parks.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in 1935 the Works Progress Administration came along. It is known today as the very government program that gave rise to the new term, \u201cboondoggle,\u201d because it \u201cproduced\u201d a lot more than the 77,000 bridges and 116,000 buildings to which its advocates loved to point as evidence of its efficacy. The stupefying roster of wasteful spending generated by these jobs programs represented a diversion of valuable resources to politically motivated and economically counterproductive purposes.<\/p>\n

The American economy was soon relieved of the burden of some of the New Deal\u2019s excesses when the Supreme Court outlawed the NRA in 1935 and the AAA in 1936, earning Roosevelt\u2019s eternal wrath and derision. Recognizing much of what Roosevelt did as unconstitutional, the \u201cnine old men\u201d of the Court also threw out other, more minor acts and programs which hindered recovery.<\/p>\n

Freed from the worst of the New Deal, the economy showed some signs of life. Unemployment dropped to 18 percent in 1935, 14 percent in 1936, and even lower in 1937. But by 1938, it was back up to 20 percent as the economy slumped again. The stock market crashed nearly 50 percent between August 1937 and March 1938. The \u201ceconomic stimulus\u201d of Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal had achieved a real \u201cfirst\u201d: a depression within a depression!<\/p>\n

The stage was set for the 1937\u201338 collapse with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 \u2014 better known as the Wagner Act and organized labor\u2019s \u201cMagna Carta.\u201d To quote Hans Sennholz again:<\/p>\n