FourSeasonsBeagle - The Monday Morning Memo

“By the spring of 1935, the panic that had gripped America on inauguration day was over, and Roosevelt had launched three sweeping new programs: The National Youth Administration, to provide training for young people without work, The Rural Electrification Administration, that would light up the American countryside, and The Works Progress Administration, that would change the face of much of the American landscape. It built, or rebuilt, 2,500 hospitals, 6,000 public schools, 10,000 airport landing fields, and enough miles of roadway to pave the continent from coast-to-coast more than 200 times. Jobless artists and writers, composers and musicians benefitted from the WPA as well; Saul Bellow and Thomas Hart Benton, Ralph Ellison and Orson Welles, Berenice Abbot and Alan Lomax and hundreds of others. It turned out nearly 1,000 publications, including guides to all 48 states. Staged plays and performed symphonies in small towns that had never seen a live performance, revived the art of mural painting on the walls of schools and post offices, commissioned photographers to chronicle the human cost of The Depression, and transcribed the memories of American slaves, and collected the folk songs all kinds of Americans sang.”

- Ken Burns: The Roosevelts – An Intimate History, Episode 5, The Rising Road

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