Make work projects

Now and then, I like to quote illustrious authors who agree with my own exalted opinions.  In this case, the subject is New Deal programs that put people from all walks in life to work.  Conservatives don't like the government spending money on things like this.  I guess they think government money is somehow impure, unlike private sector money.  Or maybe they think it makes us soft.  My opinion is, things needed to be done, people needed work, and a lot of wonderful things got done.  There's no shame in any of that.  Nobody got a handout.  They worked, and they felt useful once again.

You will recall that even artists and writers got paid for jobs they did for the government.  Here is John Steinbeck on the subject, from Travels With Charley.

If there had been room in Rocinante, I would have packed the W.P.A. Guides to the States, all forty-eight volumes of them.  I have all of them, and some are very rare.  If I remember correctly, North Dakota printed only eight hundred copies and South Dakota about five hundred.  The complete set comprises the most comprehensive account of the United States ever got together, and nothing since has even approached it.  It was compiled during the depression by the best writers in America, who were, if that is possible, more depressed than any other group while maintaining their inalienable instinct for eating.  But these books were detested by Mr. Roosevelt's opposition.  If W.P.A. workers leaned on their shovels, the writers leaned on their pens.  The result was that in some states the plates were broken up after a few copies were printed, and that is a shame because they were reservoirs of organized, documented, and well-written information, geological, historical, and economic.  If I had carried my guides along, for example, I would have looked up Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, where I stopped, and would have known why it is called Detroit Lakes, who named it, when, and why.  I stopped near there late at night, and so did Charley, and I don't know any more about it than he does.