There were some interesting comments by Michael R.
    Morgenstern on H-URBAN on New Deal relief:
            >"Hopkins sought to preserve the skills of the
            unemployed through work relief, a major rationale for
            the WPA, for future employment.  As such, the remark
            that jobs required little skill is a bit ... well,
            wrong.  Too many times New Deal work relief is written
            off as make work or generalized as simply public works
            projects, when actually the social utility of work
            relief extended from the worker to the community
            through the enhancement of skills and the provision of
            living wages, through to the establishment of
            specialized community programs such as the staffing of
            rural schools and the establishment of community
            centers."
       I disagree on the skills part (but agree with the value of
       the WPA etc in generating desperately needed cash &
       community services, and possibly also self esteem.) Hopkins
       did indeed talk about "preserving" skills. But neither the
       CWA nor the WPA (nor the CCC) did very much of that.  Most
       workers did the most casual kind of unskilled labor.  There
       were indeed some rather famous "arts" projects.  But most of
       them involved very minimal skills.  The writers, for
       example, did very little writing.
            One key difference between the WPA-type programs and
       today is job training. Since 1960 or so the US has been
       committed to a human capital model of employment (following
       the intellectual leadership of Chicago economists Gary
       Becker and Theodore Schulz.)
            The New Deal cut a deal with the labor unions: NO NEW
       SKILLS to be taught on relief.  In a famous episode, FDR
       took the AFL president William Green on a tour of the first
       CCC camp to show that the boys would not be taught any
       skills that could possibly compete with union members.
            There were some exceptions. The NYA did try to train
       some youth in its own vocational ed. system--and then it
       slammed into the fierce opposition of the public school
       system, which felt seriously threatened.  (NYA instructors
       were notoriously poor teachers.)
            Surely some people on WPA learned some useful job
       skills, though I have yet to encounter any study or even
       anecdotal evidence to that effect.  People who left the WPA,
       CCC etc were stigmatized as bad workers, and until WW2 they
       had a very hard time finding any job.
            See Richard Jensen, "The Causes and Cures of
            Unemployment in the Great Depression,"  Journal of
            Interdisciplinary History 19 (1989) 553-83.
       Richard Jensen
       U of Illinois-Chicago
       [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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