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The Public Works Administration and the
Geography of Industry and Labor
Jack SwabGeography 20U
December 16th, 2013
Figure 1:Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Jersey City,New Jersey. This is one example of the many projectfunded by the Public Works Administration duringthe 1930s.
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Jack SwabGeography 20UFinal PaperDecember 16th, 2013
The Public Works Administration and the Geography of Industry and Labor
Statement of Academic Integrity:
(1)THE ASSIGNMENT IS YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL WORK(2)YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE TO THESE GROUND RULES AND(3) YOU HAVE READ AND AGREE TO ABIDE BY THE STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ON THE
COLLEGE OF EARTH &MINERAL SCIENCE WEB SITE
I abide by the above statements:
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Abstract:
The Public Works Administration (PWA) funded the construction of infrastructure
projects during the Great Depression. Often times the materials necessary to build these
projects were obtained beyond the immediate geographic area where the project was
located. Thus, the goal of this paper is to investigate the effect that PWA projects had on
industrial production and how this affected labor, both locally and nationally. Government
publications will be used to examine the sourcing of different materials, specifically from
the years 1935-1937. The paper concludes that while the PWA was a national program the
majority of the material and labor came from the Northeast and Rust Belt states.
Key Words:
Economic Development Labor Flows Great Depression Public Works Administration Education Health Construction Direct Employment Indirect Employment
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List of Figures:
Figure 1:Image of Hudson County Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Jersey City, New Jersey.1
Figure 2:Map of PWA Hospital Construction
Figure 3:Map of PWA School Construction
Figure 4:Origin of Materials, New Jersey Case Study
Figure 5:Relationship between Number of Material Supplied by State and Distance from
Project Site, New Jersey
Figure 6:Origin of Materials, Illinois Case Study
Figure 7:Relationship between Number of Material Supplied by State and Distance from
Project Site, Illinois
Figure 8:Origin of Materials, Texas Case Study
Figure 9:Relationship between Number of Material Supplied by State and Distance from
Project Site, Texas
Figure 10:Origins of Materials for Selected PWA Case Studies
Figure 11: Number of Sources per Material Category
Figure 12: Weekly Employment of Workers by Category, School Project, Georgia
1Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 28
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Introduction:
The Great Depression was a period of extreme economic contraction and crisis that
affected the entire globe, hitting developed nations like the United States particularly hard.
During the 1920s, the American economy boomed with the overall wealth of the nation
doubling from 1920-1929.2This growth was fueled by new technological developments
and an increased culture of consumerism. Additionally, this increase was assisted by the
practice of buying stocks on the margin. This process of uncontrolled growth was haled in
October 1929.
Known as Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929 was the beginning of the Great
Depression. From that day onward, the economy quickly contracted with stocks marks
loosing more than 60% of their value over the next few months.3 The President at the time,
Herbert Hoover, decided not to take any action on the part of the government to assist the
economy, famous quoting in his 1930 State of the Union that Economic depression cannot
be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be
healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers
themselves.4Over the next few years, the economy continued to have troubles leading to
enormous consequences for the common man including, widespread long-term
employment, loss of savings due to bank failures, and a general increase in poverty and
homelessness.
2The Roaring Twenties. http://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties (accessed December 14, 2013).3Dolfman, Michael L. and Denis M. McSweeney. 100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending: Data for the Nation, New
York City, and Boston, 1934-1936.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Bureau of LaborStatistics, August 3, 2006. P.14
4Hoover, Herbert "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, 1930" The American PresidencyProject. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=22458 (accessed December 14, 2013).
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The election of 1932 would have Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats win both
the Presidency and the Congress. Campaigning on the ideas of direct government
intervention into the economy, Roosevelt won the support of the American people and
created a number of programs that fell under the broad vision of a New Deal for America.
One of these agencies, the Public Works Administration had significant impacts on the
economy helping it to grow in the mid-1930s.
The Public Works Administration:
The Public Works Administration (PWA) was the brainchild of Franklin Roosevelt.5
As part of the New Deal, he envisioned an agency that would stimulate the economy
through short-term employment via federal spending throughout the country. This agency
would be tasked with improving and fixing long terms infrastructure problems around the
United States. This improvement in the infrastructure, it was hoped, would encourage
further economic development and help improve the quality of life.6
Other agencies like the Work Progress Administration (WPA) can be said to have
similar goals, however the PWA was differentiated from these two mainly by the fact that it
dealt with large construction projects like consolidated schools and hospitals,
transportation infrastructure, and sanitation and utilities facilities while the WPA focused
more on activities that would bring short terms relief to unemployed workers such as arts
projects, seasonal outdoor maintenance, and small scale construction. Additionally, these
agencies operated in two different manners.7The WPA directly employed people, while the
PWA provided grants and loans to local governments and government agencies to build
5Ickes, Harold. Back to Work: The Story of PWA. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935. P. Viii6Ibid, P. 4-57Smith, Jason. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006. P. 112
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new infrastructure. Thus the federal government was not involved in the hiring process or
the acquisition of materials.8
However, the government realized that due to the geographic specialization of
industry in the United States at the time that any federal investment would have an effect
far beyond the actual location of the project. With the idea of the multiplier effect in place,
the federal government decided to make massive investments across the county, building
projects in 3, 069 of 3,071 counties in the United States from 1933-1939.9During this time
period, the PWA financed 70% of all new schools built in the United States10and 62% of all
new medical facilities.11It is estimated that the PWA alone accounted for 1.3% of the
United States GDP from 1933-1939.12Figures 2 and 3 show the extent of projects in health
and education completed and in progress in December of 1936.
This paper examines two aspects of what is known as the multiplier effect, the
process of growing the economy by an increase in spending, during the mid-1930s.The
first is the origins of the materials used to construct the project. The second aspect focuses
on both the effect on direct and indirect labor. Both aspects will be examined in
separate sections.
8Smith, Jason. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.New York:Cambridge University Press, 2006. P. 112
9Collins, Sheila and Gertrude Goldberg. When Government Helped: Learning from the Successes and Failures ofthe New Deal.New York City: Oxford University Press, 2013. P. 149
10American Public Works Association. Ellis L. Armstrong, Michael C. Robinson, and Suellen M. Hoy. History ofPublic Works In the United States 1776-1976.Chicago: American Public Works Association, 1976. P.11
11Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, PWA: A Four-Year Record of the Construction ofPermanent and Useful Public Works.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937.
12Collins, Sheila and Gertrude Goldberg. When Government Helped: Learning from the Successes and Failures ofthe New Deal.New York City: Oxford University Press, 2013. P. 149
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Figure 2:PWA Hospital Construction as of December 2, 1936. (Hospital).
7
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Figure 3:PWA School Construction as of December 1, 1936. (Schools).
8
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Paper Overview:
In 1937, the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works published two
reports entitled P.W.A. Provides Modern Hospitals and Public Works Administration Aids to
Education. In both reports, one of the sections discusses the sources of the materials used
to construct the hospitals and schools. In both cases, approximately 54% of all total
expenditures were spent on obtaining the material to construct the facilities.13Building
construction material includes all the materials needs to construct a finished building.14An
average of 15% to 18% was spent on furnishing the hospitals and schools depending upon
the specialization of the facility and the size of the building.15This left approximately 30%
of the overall PWA expenditures to labor cost directly associated with constructing the
buildings.16With these figures in mind, this paper will examine how these facilities had a
geographic tilt to them that was mainly local, but had ramifications for the entire county in
terms of construction materials and labor flows.
This paper compares two different PWA medical facilities and one PWA school
project. These three projects shed a great deal of light on the origins of the construction
materials. In both cases, a large amount of the major basic building materials were
obtained in the home states of the projects. However, certain products that were needed to
construct the building had to be obtained from outside states due to the geographic
specialization of industry depending upon the location of project.
13Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 39
14Ibid, p. 3915Ibid, p. 3916Ibid, p. 39
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In terms of labor, it becomes difficult to track the impact upon employment due to
the concepts of the indirect and direct employment. While data exists for direct
employment in similarly priced case studies, only general statements exist on the indirect
impacts of these projects on labor within the United States. Thus, this section will be
separate from the individual case studies, in its own labor case study.
The paper concludes with a brief summary of the findings.
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Section 1: Origins of Material
Data Quality:
For this paper, three main case studies were chosen: one hospital in Houston, Texas,
a Sanatorium in Jersey City, New Jersey, and a school in Calumet City, Illinois. These three
case studies were choose for a number of reason including:
a) Geographic Distribution: Each project comes from a different area of the countryb) Similarity: Schools and Hospitals are relatively similar in their overall construction,
meaning that while they often varied in scale and specialization, the overall
materials needed to create a functioning building were not dramatically different
from one another
c) Amount of Existing Data: Currently, there is very little literature about the sourcingof the materials for PWA projects. Thus, the author was forced to use the available
data.
The data referenced throughout this paper is derived from the two government booklets as
pervious described. While there may be some limited basis in these reports that may over
exaggerate the geographic sources of the materials, this limited basis would work in favor
of this paper, as it would fully document the extensive nature of the sourcing process.
Essentially, any state that supplied any materials regardless of the quantity would have
been accounted for, as it would have made the PWA look more successful to political
opponents.
It is important to note that this data may not include secondary sites for
manufacturing. One of the reports states that:
11
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Although these analyses account for the States filling the orders for
materials placed by contractors at the site of construction, they do not take into
consideration the ultimate source of all the raw materials or the locations of
establishments engaged in the semimanufacture of construction materials. If
these are included, benefits to other States are shown.PWA Provides
Modern Hospitals.17,18
This indicates that while some more advanced products like electronics or
machinery may have been manufactured in one state, that one state is not
necessarily the location of all the raw materials or processes needed to create the
product.
The data used in this paper was presented in three maps included in the original
reports. The materials listed on these maps were categorized by the author into twenty-six
categories based upon ones listed in government records.19This process may have altered
the original data, as the materials listed did not always naturally align with categories. For
example, it was difficult to determine what category products like marble granules fell
under. Quick research showed that marble granules could be used either in plaster or in
concrete. However, further research showed that it was more likely to have been used in
concrete, thus it was placed in this category. For a number of different products it became a
necessary to determine their uses via this method, thus this may be a source of error within
the data.
17It should be noted that the Public Works Administration Aids to Educationalso says words to a similarextent.18Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.
Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 4819Ibid, p. 40
12
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Additionally, there was uncertainty as to the methodology used by the federal
government when identifying products to be placed on the map. With a limited knowledge
of the construction business, the author concluded that these maps did indeed represent
the entire listing of materials used to construct these buildings, however when categorized,
some categories like Contractors Tools and Wrought Iron Pipe had no materials in them
(and were subsequently eliminated). Additionally, some categories like Millwork products
that would have assumed to be high were relatively low. In this case, it is possible that the
numbers assigned to Millwork products do not necessarily reflect the amount of millwork
products in the building. Lumber (which was imported from multiple states in some cases)
could have been converted into millwork products by carpenters employed on the project.
Additionally, as previously stated products with multiple parts may have included other
states in the extraction or parts production process. Without this data, there was no
responsible way to identify what states might be missing from the map.
With this limited understanding of the federal methodology and the authorsown
categorization, this data is intended to show more general trends than specific trends.
Case Study 1: Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Jersey City, New Jersey
Located only a few miles from New York City, the Hudson County Tuberculosis
Sanatorium in Jersey City, NJ was located in the center of some of the most intense
industrial activity in the 1930s. Large numbers of materials originated from not from New
Jersey but also from the surrounding states of New York and Pennsylvania, as seen in
Figure 4. Additionally, the overwhelming majority of the materials come from the industrial
Northeast and Great Lake States.
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Figure 4: Origin of Materials Used for Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Jersey City, NJ.20
This map was converted into numerical data as described in the Data Quality section
and was plotted against distance from the largest city in 1930 for each contributing state to
the individual site. Figure 5 shows that there is a correlation between distance and the
origin of the material.
20Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 47
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Figure 5: There is a clear correlation between the number of materials contributed and thedistance of the state from Jersey City, NJ.
The closer a state was to New Jersey, the more likely it was contribute a large array
of materials to the project. Thus as distance decreased in terms of closeness to the project
site the number of the materials supplied increased.
2447
24011626
1168
949 710 639 530 474 398 287 281 263 191 16881 71
41 1 1 1
42
3
1
5 5 5
1 1
8
2
17
4
1525
1
10
100
1000
10000
Distance(miles)(Log10)
States
Relationship between Number of Material Supplied by
State and Distance from Project Site
New Jersey
15
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Case Study 2: School, Calumet City, Illinois.
The materials necessary for the school project in Calumet City also came from a
wide variety of sources, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Origin of Materials Used for a School in Calumet City, IL.21
In this example, the location had a significant effect upon the origins of the
materials, as a number of other states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, Alabama, and
Missouri) all contributed materials to the project that were sourced from other states
closer to New Jersey in the previous case study. However, there is a still a core group of
states in the Northeast that contribute materials to the project, as highlighted in Figure 7.
21Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. Public WorksAdministration Aids to Education.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 40
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Figure 7: In this example, there is a correlation between the number of materialscontributed and the distance of the state from Calumet City, IL.
This graph shows that there is correlation between distance and number of
materials contributed. When compared to the New Jersey cases study this trend is about
equal in strength. While conventional knowledge would assume that this correlation would
be weaker, comparatively New Jersey obtained a roughly equal number of materials from
states that were not within a 300-mile radius. One of the reasons that that data may point
to this conclusion is that this project overall has less materials listed on the map. Thus,
while geographic representation of the states is accurate, the number of different materials
listed may not be completely representative of what was actually contributed.
1451 847 757 756 707 697 655 467 378 305 253 251141 101
1
3
1 12
12
1
3 3
12
3 3
8
1
10
100
1000
10000
Distance(miles)(Log10)
States
Relationship between Number of Material Supplied
by State and Distance from Project Site
Illinois
Disance from Site
Total Number of Materialsfrom State
17
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Case Study Three: General Hospital, Houston, Texas
This hospital, costing approximately 2.23 million dollars to build, purchased
material from around the county, much like the sanatorium in New Jersey.22It however
differed from New Jersey and Illinois in the fact that the majority of the materials had to be
purchased from states over 500 miles away. As Figure 8 shows, this hospital purchased the
majority of the materials mainly from the Northeast and from what is today known as the
Rust Belt.
Figure 8: Origin of Materials Used for a General Hospital in Houston, TX.23
22Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 46
23Ibid, p. 46
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With the exception of a small number of products from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama,
Missouri, and Tennessee; Texas had to source all the materials for this project from the
industrial states. Additionally, Figure 9 reaffirms that the home state of the project typically
supplied the largest number of materials for the project.
Figure 9: This case study, there is a weak correlation between the number of materialscontributed and the distance from Texas. In this example the large contribution from NewYork, Pennsylvania, and Ohio make it clear that these areas produced materials needed forthe project.
However, in this Case Study, the correlation between distance and origin of
materials does not exist in the same capacity it did for Illinois and New Jersey. While Texas
supplied the largest number of materials overall for the project, states like New York,
Pennsylvania, and Ohio (all more than 1,000 miles away from Houston) supplied over a
1607
1605
1488
1421
1411
1338
1251
1116
1107
1006950
940 872 678486 440 409 387
12
4
12
4 5
1
11
1
3
1
8
3 32
6
1
3
19
1
10
100
1000
10000
Distance(miles)
(Log10)
States
Relationship between Number of Material Supplied by
State and Distance from Project Site
Texas
Distance from Site
Total Materials from State
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third of all materials necessary to complete the project. In this example, the data clearly
shows that the Northeastern and Rust Belt regions of the United States were dominate
industrial production.
Observations:
From these three case studies, it is clear that the industrial capability of the United
States was mainly located in the Northeast and Rust Belt. As shown in Figure 10, four of the
top five states are located in these areas, and with the exception of Texas and Tennessee,
eight of the top ten are in these areas. It is also clear that there were limited regional
alternatives to these industrial areas. The majority of Tennessee contributions were of
natural resources such as lumber, cut stone, concrete additives as opposed to finished,
high-tech goods. Alabama had a number of major steel companies in Birmingham, however
other than this the American South was not a major manufacturing region. Neither was the
Mid-West, West Coast, or the Southwest. With a few minor exceptions for contributions of
natural resources, these regions either did not have the capabilities to manufacture what
was needed or were too far away to be economically competitive with the Rust Belt and
Northeastern states.
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Figure 10: The industrial states of the Northeast and Rust Belt are large contributors to the
number of materials needed to complete each project.
Additionally, another way to show this geographic specialization of industry is by
looking at the totals in each category of materials that was purchased. Figure 11 highlights
these differences.
30
29
24
19
1918
13
9
9
7
7
6
5
5
3
3
33
1
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania
Ohio
TexasIllinois
Massachusetts
Connecticut
Indiana
Tennessee
Alabama
West Virginia
Virginia
Missouri
Maryland
Arkansas
MinnesotaWisconsoin
Maine*
Number of Materials Contributed to Project
States
Origins of Materials for Selected PWA Case
Studies
* also Vermont, North Carolina, Louisiana, Colorado,California, Washington, New Hampshire, Oklahoma,Kentucky, Arizona, Michigan
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Figure 11: Electrical Equipment is extremely high, indicating that is was something onlyproduced in a few areas of the county that also was vital to the operation/construction ofthe building.
It is apparent that electric equipment, cement, and ornamental ironwork were items
that were significant aspects of these projects. Additionally, in combination with the
geographic specialization of industry during this time period, the majority of these items
would have been produced in the Northeast and Rust Belt.
What this analysis shows is that the United States was a nation with definitive
geographic boundaries when it came to industrial production. Also, through these three
case studies it is clear that high-tech and high-specialty goods that were only produced in
certain states, meaning that they were dominate in these areas.
31
18
14 1413
12 12 12 12
9 98 8 8
7 7 76
54
3 32 2
1 102
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
2426
28
30
32
NumberofDifferentSources
Materials by Category
Number of Sources per Material Category
22
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Section Two: Employment
As stated, one of the major goals of the PWA was to provide employment to citizens
who were out of work though the building of these projects. Initially, the author believed
that these projects would have had a significant effect on the labor flows around the
country, with certain areas with higher numbers of PWA projects attracting higher
numbers of unemployed workers. While this would be true if the projects were massive in
scale in relatively unpopulated areas, most PWA projects were modest in size and were
dispersed across the entire country (as shown in Maps 1 and 2). In this sense, labor flows
would not have been altered. Additionally all three case studies are located in areas that
were urbanized in the 1930s, thus these projects likely provided employment for the
preexisting locally unemployed construction workers and craftsmen.
While the PWA did not create mass migration to PWA construction sites, the PWA
did have a significant effect on employment across the country. This impact on employment
can be divided into two main categories, direct and indirect employment. Direct
employment is in the actual construction of the building, indirect employment arises from
all the services needed to actually get the building built (design and planning services,
manufacturing construction parts, obtaining natural resources for manufacturing,
etcetera).24These different forms of employment have completely different geographic
implications, however they have direct connections with origins of the materials needed for
construction.
24Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 19
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Direct Employment:
Direct employment employed workers mainly from the surrounding area and
depended upon a number of different factors. School projects tended to be smaller in size
than hospitals thus required less workers. Additionally, the estimated timeline for projects
also played a major factor. For example, a similarly priced school to the Illinois case study
that was built in Georgia employed an average of 291 men each week to complete the
project in under a year as shown in Figure 12.25
Figure 12: This figure highlights the number of workers employed each week throughoutthe construction of a school in Georgia.26
25Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. Public WorksAdministration Aids to Education.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 23
26Ibid, P. 24
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However, the Tuberculosis Sanatorium in New Jersey employed an average of 190
men each week to complete the project in 28 months.27These differences in time mean that
the overall impact upon the economy was different. In the school case study, compensation
for 313, 199 hours of labor equated to $219,423 in compensation.28This means that each
worker was paid approximately $0.70 per hour of work over a 50-week period.29This
equates to a yearly salary of $1,400 (based upon a 40 hour work week). With the average
salary of the 1930s at $1,524, these workers were getting paid below the average salary.
However even though the salary was below average, the workers were still contributing to
the local economy.30
While data is lacking for how much money in compensation was allotted to workers
on the Sanatorium project, using $0.70 as the standard (as it was a federally funded project,
assuming that standards were consistent across the country), it is still possible to calculate
the economic impact. Workers would have been compensated for 583, 859 hours of labor
over 28 months (approximately 117 weeks), equating to a yearly salary of approximately
$1,425.31However, when the time factor of approximately 2.3 years is taken into account,
the economic impact upon the community is much larger as it is sustained over a longer
period to time. In this example, 190 men would have made $3,278 over a 2.3-year period,
much more than in the school project. Thus larger projects yielded higher economic
27Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 27-29
28Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. Public WorksAdministration Aids to Education.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 23
29Ibid, 2330Dolfman, Michael L. and Denis M. McSweeney. 100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending: Data for the Nation,
New York City, and Boston, 1934-1936.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Bureau of LaborStatistics, August 3, 2006. P. 15
31Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 27-29
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impacts due to long-term direct employment, as opposed to smaller, short-term direct
employment.32
Indirect Employment:
In the writing of these reports, the federal government established a ratio of 4.5
hours of indirect employment to every one hour of direct employment.33,34Thus this
means, that four and a half times the amount of work was being done away from the
construction sites in the designing, manufacturing and processing of the materials needed
for construction. This relates directly to sourcing of the materials needed for each project.
Knowing that average hourly wage in 1935 was $0.61 it is possible to calculate the
economic impact of indirect employment.35,36For the comparable school project in Georgia,
based on the 4.5-to-1 ratio, a total of 1,409, 396 hours of indirect employment was
necessary for the project to be completed. At the average hourly wage of $0.61, this would
equate to approximately $859,732 in wages being paid. In the case of the sanatorium, the
federal government calculated that $2,597,065 of wages were paid for indirect labor
throughout the construction process37.
32This section is flawed as it fails to take into account differences in wages (i.e., a foreman would be paidmore than a common laborer) and that not every worker was employed for the entire time that the projectwas under construction as shown in Figure 1. However, for purposes of explaining economic impacts on thelocal scale, the author felt that it was appropriate to include a basic distribution of the entire lump sum ofcompensation.
33This number is often contested in historical economics, however for the purpose of this paper the federalgovernments research was used to provide a standards on which to judge all data34Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.
Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 2135Average was calculated excluding the average government wages in 193536Dolfman, Michael L. and Denis M. McSweeney. 100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending: Data for the Nation,
New York City, and Boston, 1934-1936.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Bureau of LaborStatistics, August 3, 2006. P. 16
37Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. P.W.A.Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. P. 27-29
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While these numbers do not seem significant, in the context of Section 1, they are
quite significant. What these numbers show is that indirect employment had a much larger
impact on the economy than direct employment did. This means that the industrialized
areas of the county often received both money from direct employment through PWA
projects in their state but also much more money through indirect employment from other
states that needed their manufacturing capabilities to product products for the projects.
Conclusion:
From these analyses it is clear that while PWA projects were distributed throughout
the entire United States, the economic impact that these projects had was disproportionally
centered on the Northeast and Rust Belt regions of the country. In all three case studies, the
majority of materials originate from the Northeast and Rust Belt states, and through
estimation of indirect employment, it is clear that these areas received additional economic
benefit more than any other area of the country. While these areas of the county did receive
additional economic benefit from the PWA, taking into consideration the specialization of
industry across the country at the time, it could not have occurred any other way. It was
not that the PWA was created to favor more industrial states; it was that the PWA had a
larger effect on these states. While it is outside of the scope of this paper, the author
hypothesizes that more agricultural and natural resources based states likely received
more assistance from programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Act than they did the
PWA.
Overall, the PWA created a massive multiplier effect throughout the United States
economy one that affected the entire country. On the local level direct employment brought
low amounts of relief to unemployed construction workers and craftsmen. In the home
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states of projects outside of the Northeast and the Rust Belt it had a moderate effect due to
a combination of direct employment at the site and indirect employment for a large amount
of products for the building. However the most significant impact was on the industrialized
Northeast and Rust Belt states through a combination of indirect and direct employment
not only for their own projects, but also through additional indirect employment to meet
the needs of other PWA projects in unindustrialized states.
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Sources:
American Public Works Association, Ellis L. Armstrong, Michael C. Robinson, and Suellen M.
Hoy. History of Public Works In the United States 1776-1976.Chicago: American
Public Works Association, 1976.
Collins, Sheila and Gertrude Goldberg. When Government Helped: Learning from the
Successes and Failures of the New Deal.New York City: Oxford University Press,
2013.
Dolfman, Michael L. and Denis M. McSweeney. 100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending: Data
for the Nation, New York City, and Boston, 1934-1936.Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 3, 2006.
Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, PWA: A Four-Year Record of the
Construction of Permanent and Useful Public Works. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1937.
Hoover, Herbert "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, 1930" The
American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=22458
(accessed December 14, 2013).
Ickes, Harold. Back to Work: The Story of PWA.New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935.
Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public
Works. P.W.A. Provides Modern Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1937.
Research Section of the Projects Division, Federal Emergency Administration of Public
Works. Public Works Administration Aids to Education.Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1937.
29
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Smith, Jason. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-
1956.New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
The Roaring Twenties. http://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties (accessed
December 14, 2013).
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