People Must Live by Work - Steven Attewell Politics and Culture in Modern America

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      People Must Live by Work

      POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA

       Series Editors:

      Margot Canaday, Glenda Gilmore,

      Michael Kazin, Stephen Pitti, Thomas J. Sugrue

      Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levels—local, national, and transnational. The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor, and on intellectual history and popular culture.

      People Must Live by Work

      Direct Job Creation in America, from FDR to Reagan

      Steven Attewell

      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLYANIA PRESS

      PHILADELPHIA

      Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press

      All rights reserved.

      Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

       www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      ISBN 978-0-8122-5043-5

      Contents

       List of Abbreviations

       Introduction. Prehistory of an Idea

       Chapter 1. First Objective of Reform: Direct Job Creation in the Committee of Economic Security and the Designing of the New Deal

       Chapter 2. People or Projects: The Works Progress Administration Versus the Public Works Administration Reconsidered as Economic Theory and Ideology

       Chapter 3. “One Third of a Nation”: WPA Direct Job Creation Reconsidered as a Policy Success

       Chapter 4. Right to Work? Rethinking the Promise of Full Employment in the 1945 Moment

       Chapter 5. Jobs and Freedom: The Missing Front in the War on Poverty

       Chapter 6. The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act: The High-Water Mark for Direct Job Creation in “the New Deal That Never Happened”

       Conclusion. Jobs and the Policy Imagination

       Notes

       Index

       Acknowledgments

      Abbreviations

AAAAgricultural Adjustment Administration
ACAAdvisory Committee on Allotments
AFDCAid to Families with Dependent Children
AFL-CIOAmerican Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
APDAmerican political development
ARRAAmerican Recovery and Relief Act
CAPCommunity Action Program
CCCCivilian Conservation Corps
CEACouncil of Economic Advisers
CESCommittee on Economic Security
CETAComprehensive Employment and Training Act
CWACivil Works Administration
EITCEarned Income Tax Credit
ELRemployer of last resort
ERAEmergency Relief Appropriation Act
FAPFamily Assistance Plan
FEBFull Employment Bill
FERAFederal Emergency Relief Administration
GMIguaranteed minimum income
HEWDepartment of Health, Education, and Welfare
HHAHumphrey-Hawkins Act
NAIRUnon-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment
NECNational Emergency Council
NITNegative Income Tax
NRANational Recovery Administration
NRPBNational Resources Planning Board
NWRONational Welfare Rights Organization
NYANational Youth Authority
OEOOffice of Economic Opportunity
OMBOffice of Management and Budget
OPAOffice of Price Administration
PBJIProgram for Better Jobs and Income
PECEPresident’s Committee for Employment
POURPresident’s Organization on Unemployment Relief
PSEpublic service employment
PWAPublic Works Administration
TERATemporary Emergency Relief Administration
UIUnemployment Insurance
USESU.S. Employment Service
WPAWorks Progress Administration

      Introduction

      Prehistory of an Idea

      People Must Live by Work discusses the history of an idea, one that seems completely alien to Americans today: that the government should fight unemployment (especially, but not only, in massive global depressions) by hiring the unemployed directly. The policymakers who invented and elaborated on this idea believed that the government had both a moral mandate and the practical capacity to obliterate unemployment altogether. It could deploy direct job creation measures to fine-tune the unemployment rate and eradicate mass joblessness, even in periods as calamitous as the Great Depression.

      The concept was not merely theoretical. For ten years (1933–1943), direct job creation was put into practice on a national scale by the federal government, which became the largest single employer in the country. After World War II (during which millions of Americans worked for the federal government either in uniform or in factories), a furious debate ensued over whether the right to a job should be enshrined in law and whether direct job creation should be used to give it life. Arguments persisted for thirty years, culminating in a clash over a 1978 bill meant to abolish unemployment forever. Thereafter, there was silence,

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