Work Relief Research Articles

No Relief from Politics

This article focuses on the Last Hurrah thesis, which argues that New Deal social welfare crippled the old-time city machines. In contradiction to this thesis, the author argues that New Deal work relief actually strengthened political machines. Local political bosses were able to trade jobs with the Civil Works Administration for votes for their machines, and because of the lack of a bureaucracy, the federal government could neither keep a constant watch on the actions of local officials nor reprimand or replace them when they became recalcitrant. The findings of this study suggest that the Last Hurrah thesis needs to be revised.

Labor and the Political Leadership of New Deal America

SummaryThis essay examines the relationship between popular initiatives and government decision-makers during the 1930s. The economic crisis and the reawakening of labor militancy before 1935 elevated men and women, who had been formed by the workers' movement of the 1910s and 1920s, to prominent roles in the making of national industrial policies. Quite different was the reshaping of social insurance and work relief measures. Although those policies represented a governmental response to the distress and protests of the working class, the workers themselves had little influence on their formulation or administration. Through industrial struggles, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) mobilized a new cadre, trained by youthful encounters with urban ethnic life, expanding secondary schooling and subordination to modern corporate management, in an unsuccessful quest for economic planning and universal social insurance through the agency of a reformed Democratic Party.

Work Relief and the Labor Force Participation of Married Women in 1940

Economic analysis of the labor supply of married women has long emphasized the impact of the unemployment of husbands—the added worker effect. This article re-examines the magnitude of the added worker effect in the waning years of the Great Depression. Previous studies of the labor supply of married women during this period failed to take account of various institutional features of New Deal work relief programs, which reduced the size of the added worker effect.

A Society Without Soul: The Fear of Modernism in the 1937 Opera The Romance of Robot

Journal of American CultureVolume 17, Issue 1 p. 71-78 A Society Without Soul: The Fear of Modernism in the 1937 Opera The Romance of Robot Kenneth J. Bindas, Kenneth J. Bindas Department of Histmy, West Georgia CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Kenneth J. Bindas, Kenneth J. Bindas Department of Histmy, West Georgia CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1994 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1994.00071.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume17, Issue1March 1994Pages 71-78 RelatedInformation

Role of analytical transmission EM in the study of Zr Pressure-tube alloys

Zirconium alloys are widely used in the Candu nuclear power generating system because of their unique combination of creep and corrosion resistance properties coupled with a low neutron cross section. The Zr-2.5 wt%Nb alloy has been extensively studied because it is the key component in pressure tubes. Pressure tubes are fabricated by extrusion in the two phase (α + β) field in the binary phase diagram, followed by cold work and stress relief heat treatments. As a result of this treatment, the alloy has a complex microstructure consisting of a duplex α + βzr or α + βNb structure (depending on the particular heat treatment), superimposed on which is a dislocation structure associated with the working operation. Typical microstructures are shown in Figs.l and 2. If the alloy is quenched from the β phase field (1000° C), a Widmanstätten α-βzr microstructure is produced (Fig.la). In the extruded state (Fig.lb), the βZr phase is now elongated and linked by a substructure which contains both <a> and <c> dislocations. Cold working followed a stress relief heat treatment at 400°C for 24 hrs introduces predominantly <a> dislocations, while the βZr phase (which is metastable) has decomposed to form discrete arrays of βNb (Fig-lc). Examples of the dislocation substructure are shown in Fig.2. Boundaries containing both <a> and <c> dislocations are observed. The misorientation at the boundaries is typically a few degrees. They are often stepped or faceted. In Fig.2 the steps correspond to a <c> dislocation which has dissociated to form two <c>/2 dislocations.

Work Relief in the 1930s and the Origins of the Social Security Act

The Social Security Act has provided the basis of the United States federal welfare system since its enactment in 1935. Although the first draft included a proposal for Employment Assurance, a government work program that would have provided public-sector employment for the jobless, it was eliminated by the time the final version was passed. The causes of this exclusion can be found in the massive work-relief programs of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (May 1933-December 1935), the first United States federal welfare program, and the Civil Works Administration (November 1933-March 1934). They were perceived as so problematic-interfering with labor markets and the basic rationality of capitalist production-for-profit-that no work program was contained in the Social Security Act. The work-relief programs of the 1930s can provide models for developing progressive alternatives to current proposals, particularly in support of extensive voluntary government work programs, and thereby help regain control of the welfare reform agenda.

Production-for-Use or Production-for-Profit?: The Contradictions of Consumer Goods Production in 1930s Work Relief

A variety of work relief projects were implemented in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the first U.S. federal relief agency begun in May 1933 and lasting until December 1935. They included construction, projects for professionals (e.g., writers, artists, actors and musicians), and production of consumer goods. The construction and professional projects elicited criticisms of "make-work," i.e. that little of value was produced. In contrast, the output of the consumer goods production projects was clearly useful, as canned food, garments, mattresses, bedding, and other goods were produced and then distributed to relief recipients. But these projects, termed production-for-use by FERA administrators, came under fire from capitalists for competing with the private sector. As a result, production-for-use projects that capitalists found offensive were terminated by the time the Works Progress Administration (WPA) began in late 1935, and no such government production of consumer goods has been repeated since. In this paper, I examine the FERA production-for-use projects, discuss the contradictions of "make-work," and describe the effects on government work programs since the 1930s.

Douglas McMurtrie and the American Imprints Inventory, 1937-1942

The American Imprints Inventory (AII) was a federal work relief project that administered a national survey of all American printed works produced before the final decades of the nineteenth century. Its founder and head, Douglas McMurtrie, hoped that the AII would result in a comprehensive listing of all early American imprints extant in American libraries, archives, and historical institutions. This article narrates the history of the project by focusing on the role played by McMurtrie in creating, developing, and leading the AII. His failures and successes, as well as those of the project in general, are presented and analyzed.

Corporate Liberals and Work Relief in the Depression

Corporate Liberals and Work Relief in the Depression

New deal work relief and organized labor: The CWA and the AFL building trades

New deal work relief and organized labor: The CWA and the AFL building trades

Along the "American Way": The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed

BECAUSE historians have accepted economic innovation as the standard by which to measure the New Deal's accomplishments, New Deal historiography has tended to discount the importance that reformers of the 1930s attached to the psychological effects of many federal programs.' Among American social work reformers, for example, stock manipulations and monopolistic business arrangements held less social significance than the traumatic psychic dislocation caused by simple joblessness. Unemployed, man lost his self-respect . . . ambition and pride, testified settlement headworker Lillian D. Wald.2 New Deal administrator Harry L. Hopkins noted, a workless man has little status at home and less with his friends, condition which reinforces his own sense of failure. Finally, Hopkins observed, Those who are forced to accept charity, no matter how unwillingly, are first pitied, then disdained by society in general.3

New York Sculpture during the Federal Project

W\ith few exceptions, the accounts of the development of sculpture in this country since 1930 dismiss with but brief mention the work of the thirties and early forties. These were years of economic depression and growing international tension. But they were also years of unique opportunity for the American sculptor, in no small measure due to the extraordinary art projects initiated under the New Deal legislation of Franklin Roosevelt. These projects were temporary measures created to give the artist, along with other needy citizens, work relief that would ensure survival. The government art projects initiated a period of creative ferment that in large measure made possible the later development of the fifties and sixties. New York City, because of its unique position as the art center of the nation, provides an apt locale for such a study.1

Work Relief to Rehabilitation. Harold E. Simmons

<i>Work Relief to Rehabilitation</i>. Harold E. Simmons

Potential for Financial Self-Support among AFDC and AFDC-up Recipients

* The research for this article was done under a Dissertation Grant from the Office of Manpower Policy, Evaluation, and Research, U. S. Department of Labor, under the authority of Title I of the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962. Researchers undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. Therefore, points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent the official position of the Department of Labor. The author wishes to thank Professors Christopher Green, Robert Fearn and T. D. Wallace for their helpful criticisms and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The AFDC program has two components in 22 states. One is AFDC and it is directed largely towards female-headed families. Incapacitated males head roughly 20 per cent of the families in this category. The second component, AFDC-UP, was created in 1961 for families headed by unemployed males, who are assumed to be attached to the labor market. In the remaining states, welfare families headed by unemployed males may receive aid under a General Assistance (GA) or work relief program. As a result of the development of the AFDC-UP and work relief programs, there are few employable males now receiving GA. Because heads of AFDC and AFDC-UP families are more likely than heads of welfare families in other programs to be in a position to choose between work and assistance, attention is focused on them. tainable welfare incomes by going to work and leaving the rolls. This contention is supported by the evidence presented below. The data also indicate that the work-welfare choice should not be considered as

"Embodied Technical Change and Productivity in the United States 1929-1958."--A Comment

An article by Michael D. Intriligator entitled Embodied Technical Change and Productivity in the United States 1929-1958 appeared in the February 1965 issue of this REVIEW. To judge the importance of embodied and disembodied technical progress, Intriligator computed 40 correlations of gross national product, excluding GNP originating in government and housing, with capital and labor input. All 40 regressions resulted from combining four alternative measures of labor input, three of them mine, with five alternative capital series based on different assumptions about embodiment, and two methods of handling trend. To match Intriligator's GNP measure, labor input must exclude all general government employees. The data Intriligator actually used, however, include all government employment: civilian, military, and work relief. The period covered, 19291958, spanned the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War, periods in which the share of government employment was fluctuating violently, as well as a postwar period in which most of the employment increase was devoted to government. Intriligator's results consequently seem to have no apparent meaning. An interesting feature of the article is that all 40 regressions Intriligator computed have high correlation coefficients despite his use of irrelevant data; only one is below 0.95 and most are above 0.98. This may give further reason for skepticism about the utility of inferring causation -in this case, degree of embodiment-from minor differences in the goodness of fit of time series.

THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL INCOME DISBURSEMENTS ON THE SOUTHEASTERN STATES, 1929, 1939, 1949, AND 1957*

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INCOME disbursements is an aggregate term which includes the following seven income components (in order of relative size in the southeastern states for 1957): federal transfer payments, federal military income, federal civilian income, federal grants-in-aid, federal interest payments, pay of military reservists, and federal work relief expenditures. This study has measured the impact of federal income disbursements on the southeastern states in the years 1929, 1939, 1949, and 1957. Primarily, it has attempted to answer two questions: first, To what extent have federal income disbursements affected state and regional per capita income? and, second, To what extent have these effects varied over a period of time? Three methods were used to measure the impact of federal income disbursements on any given state or region. First, per capita figures were derived to account for population variances. Second, the analysis made use of state, regional, and national relatives. A state relative, whether for per capita income or federal military income, provides for direct comparison of the changes in per capita income or federal military income with the changes in the national relatives. For example, a state federal military relative is the state's per capita federal military income expressed as a percentage of the continental United States per capita federal military income. If the federal military income for a particular state increases more between 1929 and 1939 than that of continental United States, the state relative will increase. Thus the changes in state relatives reflect increases or decreases in a state which are not proportional to the changes in the national average of states. Finally, a comparison was made of the various components of federal income disbursements as a percentage of per capita income by state, region, and nation. Although the federal income disbursement relative for the southeastern states increased considerably over the period under study

General Assembly

The final report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East was submitted to the Conciliation Commission for Palestine on December 18, 1949. The mission's interim report, dealing with immediate aid and work relief for Palestinian refugees, had been submitted to the General Assembly in November. The final report, while not dealing directly with the refugee problem pointed out that its solution was inseparable from the general middle eastern problems of poverty, unemployment and hunger, and referred to the economic development possible in the middle eastern area, providing that peaceful intraregional cooperation could take place.

Book Review: Work Relief in New York State, 1931–1935

Book Review: Work Relief in New York State, 1931–1935

Book Review: Work Relief in New York State, 1931-1935

Book Review: Work Relief in New York State, 1931-1935

Work Relief Experience in the United States. John Charnow

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsWork Relief Experience in the United States. John Charnow Donald S. HowardDonald S. Howard Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Social Service Review Volume 17, Number 3Sep., 1943 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/634600 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.