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A big deal: Legacy of Roosevelt's effort to put people back to ...
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In a memorable "Fireside Chat" President Franklin D. Roosevelt had with the American people about his federal jobs programs in 1934, he didn't cite statistics to support their value to national progress.
Instead, he told listeners the simplest way to judge recovery lied in their individual situations.
Are you better off than you were last year? Are your debts less burdensome? Is your bank account more secure? Are your working conditions better? Is your faith in your own individual future more firmly grounded?
Those are the same questions thousands will soon answer for themselves as a result of the Obama administration's $787 billion economic stimulus plan - which contains one of the largest infrastructure investments since Roosevelt's New Deal.
Like the current economic plan, which includes money to pay for airport, road and national park improvements, Roosevelt's New Deal relied heavily on putting people to work by having them build thousands of roads, bridges, schools and parks.
And while there is some debate as to just how effective the New Deal really was, the program's impact is still evident today. Step inside the former Shelby High School (now middle school) and you're entering a building built in 1937 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration, a Great Depression-era federal relief program. Zip down Wilkinson Boulevard and you're driving down a road that for months put an average of 111 Gaston County men a day to work upgrading it, thanks to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration program that preceded the WPA.
Jobs were given that exceeded the scope of prior public works projects. In Gastonia, for example, the WPA built a regional headquarters for the Boy Scouts at the corner of West Third Avenue and South Street in 1939. Four years earlier, it hired Windsor, N.C. artist Francis Spaight to paint a mural in the downtown U.S. Post Office on West Main Avenue at York Street, which was built despite the fact that the existing post office was only 20 years old.
A mural depicting the Battle of Kings Mountain was completed by a WPA artist in the former Kings Mountain post office. It's since been moved to the Kings Mountain City Hall.
In Shelby, a combination grandstand and exhibit hall for the Cleveland County Fair was constructed as a New Deal project.
"Since county fairs give to rural population recreation, education, and examples of better farming methods," federal officials rationalized, "this project is well worthwhile to those who use it."
Meanwhile, in Gaston County, federal programs taught families how to sew and how to can and preserve food. In 1933, Harry Hopkins, top aide to President Roosevelt, sent a group of reporters to investigate social and economic conditions around the country. One visited here and remarked, "It is hard to think that the conditions can be worse than they are in Gaston County."
In perhaps a tip of the hat to Shelby's past political clout, one of the most notable New Deal-era landmarks remaining in Cleveland County is the Shelby City Hall, built in 1939 by local architects Fred Van Wageningen and L. Pegram Holland of the firm V.W. Breeze (now Holland Hamrick & Patterson Architects).
During the Great Depression and beyond, the "Shelby Dynasty" included some of the most powerful and well-connected North Carolina politicians of the era. It included former governors and brother-in-laws O.Max Gardner and Clyde R. Hoey (both also served as U.S. senators); brothers James and Edwin Yates Webb, superior court and federal judges, respectively; and Odus M. Mull, who served six terms in the N.C. House of Representatives.
Other area New Deal project examples include the construction of two Lincoln County gymnasiums, the installation of sewer systems in Gaston County and the completion of the Waco Women's Cllub Building, now the Waco Community Building.
Despite all of the work, some believe the New Deal job programs did not go far enough to eliminate the country's economic problems, largely because the jobs created weren't permanent. After Roosevelt drastically reduced federal spending after re-election in 1936, unemployment rates surged.
But people felt good enough about their individual situations to elect Roosevelt to an unprecedented third term. And all of the buildings and paintings that gave folks jobs back then now serve as our landmarks of today - and hope for tomorrow.
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