The Public Works Administration and the Geography of Industry and Labor

8/13/2019 The Public Works Administration and the Geography of Industry and Labor

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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


Project Site, Illinois

Figure 8:Origin of Materials, Texas Case Study


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).

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Figure 3:PWA School Construction as of December 1, 1936. (Schools).

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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.


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:

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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.


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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

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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


23Ibid, p. 46

18


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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

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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.


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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


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


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


25


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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


2626


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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).

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Documents

The Public Works Administration and the Geography of Industry and Labor