The
Federal Emergency Relief Administration, passed by Congress May 12, 1933,
provided a half
billion dollars in relief, disbursed through
state and local relief agencies. New York relief worker Harry Hopkins
headed the FERA, where he made waves when he spent $5 million in
his first two hours on the job. Florida created the Federal Emergency
Relief Administration, headed by Julius Stone, to distribute the Federal
funds. The program was phased out in 1935 in favor of the Works Progress
Administration
(WPA).
Headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold
Ickes, the Public Works Administration (PWA) was a work relief program
set up in May 1933 as one of the New
Deal’s earliest programs. Though not as well known as the WPA
(which served as something of a rival organization), the PWA completed
hundreds of large-scale projects in its own right. This included 70%
of all new schools built in the U.S. between 1933 and 1939, 65% of
all courthouses, 35% of the hospitals, plus slum clearance, government
building erection and other major construction projects.
By
far the most popular of all New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation
Corps, the brainchild of Franklin
D. Roosevelt, a devoted conservationist.
He personally drew up the plans for the formation and organization
of the agency. Begun in April 1933 as the Emergency Conservation
Works, and headed by Robert Fechner (who coordinated the joint
efforts of
the Departments of War, Interior and Labor), it was also one of
the first programs to operate in Florida. The Florida Board of Forestry
was in charge of CCC operations for the state. The CCC was designed
to conduct conservation work (such as reforestation, erosion prevention,
park and dam construction, and fire prevention) while simultaneously
providing education and training to thousands of young enrollees.
The enrollees were paid $30 a month: the enrollees kept $5, and
were required
to send the rest home to their families. The most notable accomplishment
for Florida by the CCC was the construction of the Florida Park
Service, and the planting of thousands of trees.
Harry Hopkins, head of the FERA and the future WPA, was worried whether many citizens would survive the winter of 1933-1934. So he convinced his friend President Roosevelt to create the Civil Works Administration (CWA) in order to offer work relief for the that winter. Though it lasted only a few months, this Federal work program (unlike the FERA in which funds were distributed through state agencies) had over four million workers on the payroll. By spring the PWA and FERA assumed many of its projects.
The start of the gargantuan Works
Progress Administration (WPA)—a.k.a.
Works Projects Administration—signaled the conversion from temporary
relief efforts such as the FERA and CWA (even the PWA and CCC were meant
to be only temporary originally) to long term reform. Headed by Harry
Hopkins, the WPA was a massive work-relief program that ranged from conservation
and work projects to cultural and historical endeavors. Begun in 1935,
the WPA was active till the end of the New Deal in 1942.
The Farm Security Administration 
(FSA) was created in the Department of Agriculture in 1937. The FSA
and its predecessor, the Resettlement Administration (RA),
were New Deal programs designed to assist poor farmers during the Dust
Bowl and the Great Depression. Roy Emerson Stryker was the head of
a special photographic
section in the RA and FSA from 1935-1942.
During its eight-year existence, the section created the 77,000 black-and-white documentary still photographs for which it is world-famous. Beginning in 1939, it also created 644 color documentary still photographs. The section's documentary project continued for one year after the unit moved to the Office of War Information in 1942.
