Public Works Administration: Information from Answers.com
U.S. government agency (1933 – 39). It was established as part of the New Deal to reduce unemployment through the construction of highways and public buildings. Authorized by the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and administered by Harold Ickes, it spent about $4 billion to build schools, courthouses, city halls, public-health facilities, and roads, bridges, dams, and subways. It was gradually dismantled as the country moved to a military-industrial economy during World War II.
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The Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, created by Title II in the National Industrial Recovery Act of June 1933, became the first national peacetime effort to create jobs. Eventually known as the Public Works Administration (pwa), this New Deal program spent over $6 billion to shore up the nation's infrastructure while combating unemployment. Under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes's direction, the pwa constructed or refurbished highways, dams, low-cost housing, airports, warships, and other public projects. States and municipalities provided supervision in some cases, but all had to respect pwa guidelines. No pwa projects could use convict labor or work employees more than thirty hours a week. Congress required that human labor be used "in lieu of machinery whenever practicable" to maximize employment. By the close of 1933, thirteen thousand federal projects and twenty-five hundred locally supervised projects were under way.
The pwa earned a near spotless reputation for good management, and Ickes used every avenue to guarantee Afro-Americans their share of positions at all levels. Critics, however, complained that Ickes planned too cautiously, thereby delaying projects and new jobs.
See also New Deal.
Public Works Administration (PWA), in U.S. history, New Deal government agency established (1933) by the Congress as the Federal Administration of Public Works, pursuant to the National Industrial Recovery Act. In the hope of promoting and stabilizing employment and purchasing power, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought about the creation of this agency to administer the construction of various public works, such as public buildings, bridges, dams, and housing developments, and to make loans to states and municipalities for similar projects. Subsequent legislation continued its operation; under the administration (1933–39) of Harold L. Ickes, the PWA completed a great many public projects. President Roosevelt's reorganization plan of 1939 made the PWA a division of the Federal Works Agency. The PWA was liquidated in the 1940s.