A series where we take a #lookback at the stories and history of our community, brought to you by Mick Pryor, Financial Advisor with Edward Jones.
Following the crash of the stock market in 1929, the United States collapsed into the Great Depression. By 1932, wages and salaries were half of what they were in 1925 for many workers. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, unemployment was at an all-time high. In June 1933, Roosevelt passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to promote the economic practice of “cartelization,” or the practice of setting wages and prices to eliminate smaller companies and reduce competition through the concentration of capital. In order to get support from the labor unions, Roosevelt included section 7a which affirmed the rights of unions to organize and led to massive growth in union membership in the following years.
The NIRA also created the Public Works Administration (PWA) which was founded with a $3.3 billion dollar program (around $80 billion today) and was oriented towards recruiting workers in industrial jobs. The PWA provided employment and housing for low income families, although housing was segregated and unequal as the tenant selection process favored high income groups who qualified for PWA programs. The PWA is responsible for the improvement of key buildings in many of Wyoming’s cities in an attempt by President Roosevelt to put a federal presence in every city across the country. The PWA sponsored projects to build school buildings in Riverton and the building of a new post office which was completed in 1941. The PWA also constructed a new building for the Supreme Court and State Library in Cheyenne in 1937. This $363,636 project was completed directly across from the state capitol building.
Around the time of the passage of the NIRA in 1933, Congress passed the Federal Emergency Relief Act which appropriated $500 million to be given as federal grants in order to aid states in financing their local relief programs. These programs would be carried out by the Civil Works Administration (CWA) which was also established in the Federal Emergency Relief Act. Like the PWA, the CWA focused on job creation but focused on a broader array of projects. The city of Riverton proposed a project to grade and gravel all streets except for Main and Federal Boulevard: a task that they could not otherwise afford without federal funding. This was approved along with another project in which the CWA dug a 1400 foot ditch and laid a sewer at an average depth of four feet.
The CWA also built half a mile of irrigation ditches in Riverton parks. The CWA had four million American men working on CWA financed projects by January of 1934, though this employment did not come cheap. Private employers complained that the new wages paid by the government were attracting men from private industry, resulting in President Roosevelt announcing the immediate liquidation of the CWA only after several months of its operation. In its place, Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to create jobs through a $4 billion program in the spring of 1935. The WPA averaged around 2 million jobs from 1935-1939, reaching its goal of filling 3.5 million jobs twice. The WPA sought to amend the previous CWA issue of high federal spending with much lower wages and worse treatment of workers. Consequently, workers frequently organized wildcat strikes and walkouts on WPA projects in order to fight for better wages and conditions. In order to gain the services of the WPA, communities would apply for WPA workers and funds through the Wyoming State Planning Board that was formed shortly after the creation of the WPA. They paved, graded, repaired, and improved 75 miles of streets and 80 bridges in Wyoming. They constructed sewers, dug drainage ditches, built septic tanks, laid water mains, and drilled wells across the state.
The WPA also funded the Federal Art Project on a national scale and built a community art center in Laramie with extension galleries in Riverton, Lander, Casper, Newcastle, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Sheridan, and Torrington. Wyoming had the third most galleries out of every state, only less than Oklahoma and Florida. In 1938 the Riverton Gallery was opened in the high school featuring photographs and sculptures produced by artists as part of the Federal Art Project. In 1939, the art galleries in Wyoming had a monthly attendance of around 3,100 people with 60 exhibitions since December 1936 when the first gallery was opened in Laramie. Though the Federal Art Project lasted only for eight years, the total federal investment was about $35,000,000.
For more information about what projects were done in your city, check out the website https://livingnewdeal.org/
Next up for the Fremont County Museum
June 22, 9am at the Dubois Museum, “Kids Corner: Badlands Trek” Bailey Tire/Pit Stop Children’s Exploration Series
June 26, 7pm at the Pioneer Museum, “Eagle Spirit Dancers”
June 29, 10am at the Pioneer Museum, “Geology of Johnny Behind the Rocks” Wind River Visitors Council Adventure Trek Series
July 3, 7pm at the Pioneer Museum, “Eagle Spirit Dancers”
July 5, 6pm at the Dubois Museum, “Matt Brueseke: Geology Talk” Wyoming Community Bank Discovery Speakers Series
July 6, 9am at the Dubois Museum, “Matt Brueseke: Lava Mountain Geology Trek” Wind River Visitors Council Adventure Trek Series
Call the Dubois Museum 1-307-455-2284, the Pioneer Museum 1-307-332-3339 or the Riverton Museum 1-307-856-2665 for detail regarding their programs.
The Dubois Museum, the Pioneer Museum in Lander and the Riverton Museum need your financial support. In the current economic environment, the museums are more reliant than ever on donations from the private sector to continue to provide the quality programs, collections management, exhibits and services that have become their hallmark over the last four years. Please make your tax deductible contribution to be used specifically for the benefit of the museum of your choosing by sending a check to Fremont County Museums 450 N 2nd Rm 320 or taking it directly to the museum you choose to support.