References
- Verse by Lillian Crelling found in the Ruth Hollingshead scrapbook, State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City as published in Louise Rosenfield Noun, Iowa Women in the WPA (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999 ), p. x.
- Following 1939, the Works Progress Administration was renamed the Works Projects Administration and became a part of the Federal Works Agency, including the Public Works Administration, the Public Roads Administration, the Public Buildings Administration, and the United States Housing Authority. For the remainder of this paper the organization will be referred to as the WPA. Works Progress Administration, Handbook of Procedures for State and District Works Progress Administrators (Washington DC: Works Progress Administration, 1937); Federal Works Agency, Questions and Answers on the WPA (Washington DC: Works Projects Administration, 1939).
- ‘Orders for 9,000,000 Garments on Hand in Local WPA Sewing Shop,’ Women’s Wear Daily, April 29, 1936, p. 1.
- Martha H. Swain, ‘The Forgotten Woman: Ellen S. Woodward and Women’s Relief in the New Deal,’ Prologue (1983 ), pp. 201–213.
- Information from primary sources including newspapers, particularly The New York Times, trade publications such as Women’s Wear Daily, government reports from the period and archival materials including photographs housed in the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland provided a rich context for examining the inner workings of the sewing room projects. Information from this paper was presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting and National Symposium of the Costume Society of America, May 29–June 3, 2007, San Diego, CA.
- Jane Farrell-Beck and Jean Parsons, 20th Century Dress in the U.S. (New York: Fairchild Publications, 2007); Thomas Ferguson, ‘Industrial Conflict and the Coming of the New Deal: The Triumph of Multinational Liberalism in America,’ in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order 1930, 1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989 ) pp. 3–31; Rox Laird, ‘How Work Remade America’, The Des Moines Register, July 27, 2008, 1OP.
- The codes were initiated by forty-three industrial groups including, but not limited to, automobile manufacturing, the motion picture industry, the silk textile industry and the dress manufacturing industry. While over 500 codes were approved, on May 26, 1935, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Schecter Poultry v. US that the NRA was unconstitutional. Sherman Trowbridge, Some Aspects of the Women’s Apparel Industry (Washington DC: Office of National Recovery Administration, 1936).
- Marie Dresden Lane and Francis Steegmuller, America on Relief (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938 ); Edward Ainsworth Williams, Federal Aid for Relief (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939).
- Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943).
- The Social Security Act was also created during this second New Deal. Federal Works Agency, Questions and Answers on the WPA.
- Appendix D, no date, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, 54 (hereafter cited as RG 69, NA); House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration, 76th Cong., appendix, 1939, 1363.
- Works Progress Administration, Inventory: An Appraisal of Results of the Works Progress Administration (Washington, DC: Works Progress Administration, 1938); Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933– (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939; Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief.
- William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
- Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy.
- Works Progress Administration, Inventory; Appendix D, RG 69, NA.
- These positions were appointed and were subject to the approval of the Federal Administrator. The director of the women’s and professional projects was required by WPA policy and procedures to be a woman. Works Progress Administration, Handbook of Procedures.
- Federal Works Agency, Questions and Answers on the WPA.
- These figures varied from state to state and within each year. The stated goal of the WPA was that sponsors would pay for non-labour expenses. The ability of each sponsor to pay was affected by their financial condition and by the incidence of severe unemployment in the community. Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA. Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism; House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study, 76th Cong., appendix, 1939, 1392.
- Federal Works Agency, Questions and Answers on the WPA.
- The idea of the prevailing wage caused great controversy. Because workers could not work more than 40 hours a week and were limited in total amount paid per month, abuses were noted in some workers taking side jobs in private industry in addition to their relief employment. ‘Strikes in the WPA,’ Current History, August 1939, pp. 8–9.
- Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy; Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, Linda Gordon, and Susan Reverby, America’s Working Women, A Documentary History 1600 to the Present (New York: W & W Norton & Company, 1995); T. H. Watkins, The Hungry Years: A Narrative Description of the Great Depression in America (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2000); Ruthe Winegarten, Janet G. Humphrey and Frieda Werden, Black Texas Women (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995).
- House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study, 76th Cong., appendix, 1939, 1376.
- As quoted in June Hopkins, ‘The Road Not Taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 29 (1999 ), pp. 306–317.
- ‘Work Relief or the Dole?’ WPA Release 4-1757, September 8, 1938.
- Nick Taylor, American-Made, The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work (New York: Bantam Books, 2008).
- ‘Relief Top Issue, Survey Indicates,’ The New York Times, June 4, 1939, 27.
- ‘Plea by Mrs. Roosevelt,’ The New York Times, December 2, 1933, 3.
- Programs of the FERA included divisions of collections (toys, clothing books), repair (books, garments, furniture), sewing, nursing and dental, mattress making, library (including Braille translations), and home economics (housekeeping, canning, school lunchrooms, matron services). Swain, ‘The Forgotten Woman.’
- ‘Women’s and Professional Work in the WPA,’ Journal of Home Economics, 28, (November 1936 ), pp. 616–618.
- Ellen S. Woodward, Principal Speeches Delivered Between January 1st, 1934 and January 1st, 1937 (Washington, DC: Works Progress Administration, 1937).
- As quoted in Swain, ‘The Forgotten Woman.’
- Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy, p. 280.
- Louisiana WPA, Manual of Procedure for Referral to Works Projects Administration, 1 March 1940, RG 69, NA.
- The regions in 1936 included Region 1, the Northeast, Region II, the Middle Atlantic, Region III, South Atlantic and Southeast, Region IV, the Midwest, and Region V, the Far West. See Mary Kellogg Rice, Useful Work for Unskilled Women, A Unique Milwaukee WPA Project (Milwaukee, WI: The Milwaukee County Historical Society, 2003) for discussion of one state’s WPA project.
- Noun, Iowa Women in the WPA; Statement by Ethel Payne, the director of the Federal Emergency Relief Association’s women’s work in Mississippi. Transcripts of minutes of Staff Meeting, 5 July 1935, RG 69, NA.
- At various times throughout the WPA, the sewing projects accounted for 50 to 66% of total employment. Other categories of employment included professional and technical projects such as medical and dental, nursing, and library which accounted for about 7–10 % total employment. Research and statistical surveys accounted for nearly 3% of the total women’s employment in the WPA, the arts at 3% of the total. Other projects included book binding and repair (2.3% of the total), housekeeping aides (4.4% of the total), education projects (7% of the total), and recreation projects (3% of the total). Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief; Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy, 281.
- ‘Orders, ’ Women’s Wear Daily; Woodward, Principal Speeches.
- Non-labour expenditures on sewing room projects exceeded the average of all WPA projects including highway and building construction, averaging approximately 27% of total expenditures. ‘$20,218,000 Given for Women’s Jobs,’ The New York Times, August 29, 1935, 23; ‘Hopkins Pictures WPA in Inventory,’ The New York Times, January 2, 1939, 18; ‘Chief of WPA Sewing Projects Supervises Immense Output,’ The New York Times, October 13, 1940, 4, 5; ‘Jersey WPA Head Says Local Areas Must Supply Funds,’ The New York Times, December 27, 1940, 17; Noun, Iowa Women in the WPA; ‘Orders,’ Women’s Wear Daily.
- Swain, ‘The Forgotten Woman.’
- Protests were common when sewing rooms were cancelled or women removed from projects due to overproduction or lack of sponsor funding. As an example of the community fervor supporting the sewing rooms, in New Jersey, 88 women staged an eleven-day protest after the Pleasantville City Council decided to abandon one of the two local sewing room projects. In Girard, Illinois, merchants of the community signed a petition urgently requesting the opening of sewing room projects because of closed mines. ‘Women Seize Council Chamber,’ The New York Times, December 2, 1936, 16; ‘Jersey Women End WPA Sewing Siege,’ The New York Times, December 12, 1936, 10; Petition, 30 July 1937, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- ‘Fashion Show Opens WPA Sewing Project,’ The New York Times, June 25, 1936, 23.
- Woodward, Principal Speeches; Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Works Progress Administration, Jobs The WPA Way (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1936 ); ‘Big Textile Order by WPA,’ The New York Times, April 19, 1938, 18.
- In 1937 a new pay plan was instituted that paid women in the sewing rooms according to the amount of goods they produced. In the new pay plan, the effort was made to equal the speed of private garment factories with ‘the view to equip the projects employees for outside jobs’ in order to combine speed with quality. ‘New Pay Plan is Based on Output,’ The New York Times, October 14, 1937, 27; Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief; Swain, ‘The Forgotten Woman.’
- Robert J. Myers and Odis C. Clark, ‘Effects of a Minimum Wage in the Cotton-Garment Industry, 1939–1941,’ Monthly Labor Review (1942), pp. 318–337; Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief.
- In the shops, women could be promoted from toy making and hand sewing to cutting, finishing, or machine production of garments depending on the skills learned through training. Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Memorandum to Frank March, Director of Women’s and Professional Projects from Mary Jane Simpson, WPA Consultant, no date, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- For Use in Training Work Centers, 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Narrative Report Linn County, Iowa, December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; Noun, Iowa Women; ‘75 WPA Women Felled by Heat,’ The New York Times, July 11, 1936, 2.
- For Use in Training Work Centers, 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- ‘WPA Going Ahead on Garment Sewing Plan,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 20, 1935; ‘Federal Orders to Aid Cottons,’ The New York Times, November 28, 1935, 44; ‘58 Bids on WPA Textiles,’ The New York Times, December 3, 1935, 36; ‘WPA Asks Textile Bids,’ The New York Times, December 12, 1935, 38; ‘Big Textile Order by WPA,’ The New York Times, April 19, 1938, 8.
- ‘WPA to Hire 3,000 to Sew for Needy,’ The New York Times, July 20, 1938, 21.
- Memorandum to District WPA directors from Myra Burke, Coordinator of Statistical and Professional Projects, 9 April 1937, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Works Progress Administration, Inventory.
- Before her post as WPA head of sewing projects, Catherine Cleveland was consumer consultant for the Cotton Textile Institute. Factors contributing to the decline in cotton prices and the cotton industry were related to decline in exports, increased output of foreign competitors particularly from the Japanese, higher costs of the raw cotton fiber and higher manufacturing costs, increased processing taxes, and lower consumption of cotton. Although Cleveland maintained the purchase of these millions of yards of cloth helped the cotton industry, cotton prices continued to slow even into 1936. ‘Cotton Goods Hampered,’ The New York Times, January 1, 1935, p.45; ‘Cotton Fabric Group to Seek Protection,’ The New York Times, January 18, 1935, p. 38; ‘Cotton Goods Group Favors Regulation,’ The New York Times, February 1, 1935, p. 40; ‘Cotton Drop Held to Affect General Trade,’ Women’s Wear Daily, March 18, 1935, p. 5; ‘Cotton Prices Sag as Buying Slumps,’ The New York Times, January 5, 1936, p. 4; ‘South Faces Cotton Dilemma,’ The New York Times, June 28, 1936, p. 7; ‘Big Textile Order by WPA,’ The New York Times, April 19, 1937, p. 8; ‘Cotton Goods Mills may Reduce Output,’ The New York Times, April 27, 1937, p. 30; ‘WPA Textile Orders Sped,’ The New York Times, April 18, 1938, p. 28; ‘Chief of WPA Sewing Projects Supervises Immense Output,’ The New York Times, October 13, 1940, pp. 4, 5; Catherine Cleveland, ‘The WPA Sewing Program,’ Journal of Home Economics, 33 (1941) pp. 588–589.
- The Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation was established in 1933 as the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation. It was later renamed the Surplus Marketing Administration. An agency under the direction of the Secretary of Agriculture, the Corporation was allowed by law to purchase, exchange, process, and distribute agricultural commodities and products to fulfill its goal of removing surplus in the marketplace to distribute to the needy. It established the food stamp program in 1935. Margaret Weir, Anna S. Ofloff, and Theda Skocpol, The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); ‘Says Government Invades Industry,’ The New York Times, June 14, 1938, p. 35.
- ‘Sheeting Bids are Opened,’ The New York Times, November 1, 1935, p. 32; ‘Many Bids Received to Supply Sheeting,’ The New York Times, November 21, 1935, p. 42; ‘New England Mills Get WPA Concession,’ The New York Times, November 23, 1935, p. 32; ‘Opens Textile Bids,’ The New York Times, December 19, 1935, p. 47; ‘WPA Cloth Bids Opened,’ The New York Times, December 21, 1935, p. 30.
- The average price paid was 10.32 cents a yard. The previously reported estimates of fair average wholesale prices for the quantities purchased would have been 12.50 cents a yard according to Women’s Wear Daily. As a result of some of the controversy surrounding the bidding process, discussions emerged in The New York Times of changes to the proposed bidding process for federal government purchases. ‘Big Textile Order by WPA,’ The New York Times, December 15, 1935, p. 42; ‘WPA Cottons Prices Less Than Expected,’ Women’s Wear Daily, December 26, 1935, p. 27; ‘Changes Proposed in Federal Buying,’ The New York Times, June 8, 1938, p. 34.
- ‘WPA to Ask More Bids if Necessary,’ Women’s Wear Daily, October 3, 1935, p. 28; ‘U.S. Wage Ruling Raises Fears Here,’ The New York Times, February 3, 1937, p. 43; ‘Opinion Divided on Contract Wage,’ The New York Times, February 7, 1937, p. 9.
- A lucky group of women from Atlantic City were even invited to visit the White House due to the beauty of the layettes made in a sewing room project. ‘First Lady Honors WPA Sewing Group,’ The New York Times, February 4, 1937, p. 19; Catherine Cleveland, ‘The WPA Sewing Program,’ pp. 588–589.
- For example, pants made in the New York City area sewing room project would have retailed for $3.50 to $5.00. House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939; ‘Chief of WPA Sewing Projects Supervises Immense Output,’ The New York Times, October 13, 1940, p 4, 5.
- Letter to Mary Jane Simpson from Beatrice Kasdin, 29 October 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- ‘Fashion Show Opens WPA Sewing Project,’ The New York Times, June 25, 1936, 23.
- Report to Grace Sparkes, Board of Public Welfare, Prescott, Arizona, 5 June 1935, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Letter to all California District Directors from Division of Women’s and Professional Projects, 2 October 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; California Sewing, January 1937, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; Works Progress Administration, Inventory; ‘Report for May 1935 of Wexford, Michigan County Sewing Project,’ 1935, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; ‘First Sewing Ship Opens Here,’ The New York Times, February 4, 1936, 23; ‘WPA to Hire 3,000 to Sew for Needy,’ The New York Times, July 20, 1938, 21.
- Woodward, Principal Speeches, 10 September 1935, p. 4.
- Kentucky, Five Units on Clothing, no date, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Mary H. Isham, ‘What WPA is Doing for Colorado Women,’ October 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Cleveland, ‘The WPA Sewing Program;’ Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief; Kansas Report from Sewing Room, 8 January 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Letter to Ellen Woodward from Emma Wright, no date, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Letter to John McDonough, from Frank March, 8 April 1937, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Letter to John McDonough, Administrator WPA from Frank March, Director of Women’s and Professional Projects, 8 April 1937, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- See: Laura Hapke, Sweatshop: The History of an American Idea (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
- Memorandum to Frank March, Director of Women’s and Professional Projects from Mary Jane Simpson, WPA Consultant, 16 November 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Letter from Ellen Woodward to Eleanor Roosevelt, 8 October 1935, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- It is to be noted that other projects also received criticism from private industry. A letter describing the ‘plight’ of book binders caused by ‘unfair competition’ by the WPA mentioned much of the same complaints leveraged against the WPA by private industry including cheaper WPA prices and higher wages for WPA workers and loss of business. Private industry mattress makers also complained that the public works projects were hurting business. Pelham Barr, ‘An Open Letter to Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward,’ The Library Journal 63 (1938 ), p. 514; Letter from J.M. Fleming, Proprietor of Pensacola Mattress Co., 20 December 1934, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA. Complaints were regularly printed in Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Times, see: ‘Protests Sewing Plan,’ The New York Times, September 6, 1935, p. 33; ‘Expect Protests on Illinois WPA Dress Projects,’ Women’s Wear Daily, November 21, 1935; ‘Illinois Protests on WPA Wash Dress Plan,’ Women’s Wear Daily, December 4, 1935.
- ‘Orders, ’ Women’s Wear Daily.
- ‘Protests sewing plan,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 6, 1935, p.33.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief, p.74.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA.
- Works Progress Administration, Jobs The WPA Way; Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief, p.75; House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939, 1167.
- Lane and Steegmuller, America on Relief, p.71.
- Woodward, Principal Speeches, October 28, 1936, p.4.
- Letter by David Dubinsky, President, International Ladies Garment Workers Union to WPA Administrator Harry Hopkins, June 11, 1938, House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939, 1163.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the Works Progress Administration, RG 69, NA; Memorandum, Survey of Sewing Projects, 6 April 1937 and 9 February 1937, Records of the WPA, RG 69, NA.
- ‘House Dress Men Join in WPA Protest,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 4, 1935, p.2; ‘Protest to Hopkins on Wash Dress Projects,’ Women’s Wear Daily, November 18, 1935, p.9; House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939, 1164–1167.
- ‘Dress industry denounces WPA project to sew 18,000,000 garments for needy,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 17, 1935, p.8.
- ‘Would Aid Idle Mills with FERA Orders,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 25, 1935.
- Swain, ‘The Forgotten Woman,’ p. 208.
- ‘Say WPA Garments Fail to Fill Needs,’ The New York Times, June 23, 1938, p. 37.
- ‘Reaction to WPA Protest Uncertain,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 5, 1935, p. 6.
- ‘Decision Today on WPA Sewing Plan Indicated,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 11, 1935, p. 2; ‘Dress industry denounces WPA project to sew 18,000,000 garments for needy,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 17, 1935, p. 8; Karen Jane Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: UNC Press, 2002).
- ‘Orders, ’ Women’s Wear Daily.
- ‘Somervell Drops Woman Assistant,’ The New York Times, August 12, 1936, 1, p. 8.
- House Committee on Appropriations, Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration, 76th Cong., 3rd sess., 1940, 52.
- ‘No Change in WPA Sewing Project Seen Following Conference,’ Women’s Wear Daily, September 10, 1935, p.10.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the WPA, RG 69, NA; Memorandum to Eleanor Roosevelt from Ellen Woodward, 8 October 1935, Records of the WPA, RG 69, NA.
- ‘Mr. Hopkins Presents his Philosophy of Relief. Industry Advises to Accept the Burden as the Best Form of Insurance,’ Press Digest (1937, May 24), p. 1–12.
- Memorandum to Harry Hopkins from Ellen Woodward, 23 December 1936, Records of the WPA, RG 69, NA.
- Laird, ‘How Make Work Remade America,’, p.6 OP.
- ‘Save the WPA,’ The New Republic, June 2, 1941, 748–749; ‘Do We Need the WPA,’ New Republic, July 21, 1941, p.73.
- ‘WPA Sewing Projects to be Run by Army; Workers Have Been Busy Fixing Uniforms,’ The New York Times, January 4, 1943, p.12.