Unemployment 1938: “It will never end.”
Saturday, December 1st, 2007
February, 1938, was a bleak time in America. Unemployment was 19% and President Roosevelt reported that one million jobs a month had been lost in each of the last three months. In this article on the WPA (Works Progress Administration) LIFE asks the question, “Where will it end?” One can only imagine what went through the minds of America’s army on unemployed when LIFE stated, “The likeliest answer is that it will never end.” “Authorities say that the modern industrial machine never has needed and never will need all the nation’s workers to tend to it.” LIFE believed that, “Work Relief may be capitalism’s best answer to the problem of unemployment.” By 1938, the WPA (created in 1935) had built 19,272 bridges, killed 24,099,607 rats, and erected 660 stadiums including the Louisiana State University football stadium. Three years later, in 1941, LIFE was proven dead wrong about employment as America’s businesses geared up for the war. And by 1942 America was experiencing a severe labor shortage when men were called into the service.