Public Works and National Recovery

Report Outline
Roosevelt and the Public Works Recovery Program
National Three Billion Dollar Public Works Plan
Public Works as a Means of Relief and Revival
Recent Public Works Expenditures and Proposals
Special Focus

Roosevelt and the Public Works Recovery Program

Appointment of ten regional administrators to set in full motion the machinery for selecting state and municipal projects to share in the large public works fund appropriated by Congress at its last session is expected to be made shortly. Meanwhile, allocations of the fund have already been approved for strictly federal projects which will give employment in every state and in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The Public Works Administration is endeavoring to expedite application of the program with the objective of fulfilling the promise of prompt action given by President Roosevelt when he signed the National Recovery Act on June 16. The President said then that “we should be able to hire many men at once and to step up to about a million new jobs by October 1, and a much greater number later.”

Reports that recent improvements in business activity and commodity prices might influence the administration to retard execution of the public works program, in the expectation that large expenditures of this nature would no longer be necessary, were denied by the President on July 14. He announced that the entire appropriation of $3,300,000,000 would be expended. This decision conformed with repeated declarations by administration officials that consumers' purchasing power must be enlarged to maintain the higher price levels and increased industrial production recently recorded. It was in line with the National Recovery Administration's pleas for prompt submission of industrial codes of fair competition and its consideration of plans for immediate application of a blanket code to raise wages and spread employment generally, pending final approval of the codes of individual industries.

Qualifications Required for Approval of Projects

The Public Works Administration has indicated that in deciding upon projects to be financed under the act it will give priority to those undertakings which are ready to be started at once. At the same time, full attention is being given to President Roosevelt's warning, expressed in the statement of June 16, that “we should not pour money into unproved projects.” Plans for which approval is now being sought are required to meet three primary qualifications: (1) Immediate availability to create large employment; (2) completion without further financial aid; and (3) permanent social benefit to the community or nation. Secretary of the Interior Ickes, head of the Public Works Administration, outlined this policy as follows on July 10: