The president had to do something. Banks were failing, real-estate prices were in a free-fall, and, every day, more people lost jobs. The nation’s chief executive assembled the best minds he could find and asked: What can we do?
Spend money, they said.
Washington did. In towns and cities where buildings stood empty, where people waited for work, the cash funded road projects, beautification efforts and other attempts to wake a slumbering economy.
President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? No, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
About 75 years ago, officials in Washington unleashed the WPA (Works Progress Administration), CWA (Civil Works Administration), CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and an array of other acronymed agencies, all designed to put America to work. In Atlanta, the federal cash paid for a new sewer system to replace an old, dated series of pipes that no longer served the needs of a growing city. Sound familiar?
In the mountains, the cash helped build a signature trail that remains in use today, the Appalachian Trail.
Schools, roads, bridges, paintings in post offices: Seven decades ago, Americans could hardly go anywhere without a reminder that Washington was trying to spend the country out of a mess.
“It gave us employment, and, equally important, it gave a sense of hope,” said Paul Crater, vice president research services at the Atlanta History Center, where the Kenan Research Center contains extensive records of New Deal projects throughout Georgia. “People discovered what a desperate situation it was.”
Did the New Deal work, or did it merely keep the economy plugging along until World War II yanked us out of the Great Depression? That’s an argument for historians.
What we do know is that some of those projects still exist. The proof is no farther away than Atlanta’s streets, where crews are digging up aged sewer pipes laid decades ago. Or visit the U.S. Postal Service in College Park; the painting in its lobby is a colorful reminder of a dire time. If you pass Morningside Elementary, pause and admire its severe lines, representing severe times. Those are just a few reminders of an earlier economic stimulus package.