Postwar Public Works

Report Outline
Public Works Construction After the War
Inventory of Postwar Public Works
Public Works and Postwar Unemployment
Special Focus

Public Works Construction After the War

Lack of Centralized Planning for Public Works

Public works are assigned a place of greater or less importance in all plans for dealing with postwar unemployment. Estimates of the cost of needed public projects—projects that could be used to “take up the slack” in employment when the nation reconverts to a peacetime economy—run as high as $50 billion. The projects range from street improvements in towns and villages to huge power-navigation-irrigation developments to be undertaken by the federal government. Plans for postwar public works stand at various stages of completion. Some projects are “ready to go” as soon as men and materials become available, others have not advanced beyond the “idea” stage.

Projects to be undertaken by the federal government can readily be “timed” to meet the requirements of the postwar employment situation. This applies also to construction programs to be carried out by the states with federal aid. However, well over half the volume of postwar public construction will be undertaken by states, counties and local communities without federal aid and without centralized control. State and local projects, many of them badly needed, may compete with each other and with private industry for labor and materials if prosperity continues in the period immediately after the war.

Some measure of control over the flow of local construction could be provided by a restoration of the system of loans and grants to states and local communities adopted by the federal government during the depression. Outside assistance will be needed by cities whose resources have been drained during the war to provide facilities for war workers. On the other hand, many state governments are now in a better financial condition than ever before and will be in position to undertake extensive improvement programs after the war without help from any outside source.