The
Public Works Administration (PWA) was headed by Harold
Ickes, Secretary of the Interior. Congress gave permission for
the PWA to spend $3,300,000,000 for various public works projects.
This included the construction of schools, hospitals, post offices,
roads and dams. By June 1934 the agency had distributed its entire
fund to 13,266 federal projects and 2,407 non-federal projects.
Jerry Doyle, Philadelphia Daily News (3rd March, 1933)
(1)
Harold
L. Ickes, The Autobiography of
a Curmudgeon (1943)
I have attempted to sketch briefly PWA's direct contribution to national
defense. Because of the leeway that it had under the law to make grants
to cover the entire cost of Federal projects, PWA was able to undertake
some others that, while useful in peacetime, are just as important
for war purposes as are munitions themselves.
I particularly have in
mind hydroelectric power developments. Where would we be today with
a scarcity of power already making itself felt, and a greater lack
facing us during the next few years, if we had not gone in for the
most stupendous program of power development in history?
We claim no credit for
the conception of Boulder Dam or of the TVA. But we hurried Boulder
Dam to completion after we came in in 1933 and finished it two years
ahead of schedule. The power now being generated there is indispensable
to the war. And while the main credit for the TVA must gratefully
go to that really fine elder statesman, George W.
Norris, the records will show that it was PWA encouragement
- encouragement in the form of coin of the realm - that gave
it not only the means but the opportunity to expand into
the vitally important project that it is.
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