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What do you make of this classic anti-New Deal button? The button features a drawing of an outhouse, labeled as New Deal project "Ump-000." (Ump for Upteen?) The cartoonist seems to be saying that President Franklin Roosevelt had put vast numbers of people to work, paying them a government salary for worthless projects. In this mythical case, FDR put them to work building outhouses. As an added dig (no pun intended) at the first lady--whom Republicans hated--the button at the bottom says the outhouse project was "Sponsored by Eleanor."
This cartoon button is an effective political item, since more than 50 years after its issuance we history buffs can still debate its major point. Was the New Deal a period when the government put people to work at taxpayers' expense doing worthless projects? Was Roosevelt's New Deal the beginning of the big government conservatives love to hate? Or was the New Deal simply a humane reaction to the worst economic depression in our nation's history, a depression that left more than 1 out of 4 workers unemployed? Were the New Deal jobs programs in fact praiseworthy, since the beneficiaries earned their pay, and didn't simply "draw checks"? Jobs programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built roads, schools, airports, sidewalks, and many other public facilities; more importantly, they aided the great sea of unemployed Americans in the 1930s.
Ah, but now for the incredible part of the story behind this button. The idea of WPA-sponsored outhouses was not a figment of the imagination of a Republican cartoonist. In fact, the WPA did built thousands of outhouses across America. Three-man teams would spend an average of twenty hours on the construction of each one. Where possible the farm family receiving the new outhouse would pay for the materials (about $17 per outhouse), while the WPA supplied the labor free. These were outhouses like America had never seen before, with cast cement floors and fancy ventilation shafts.
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Had the Democrats gone mad? Building privies at government expense while the U.S. Treasury was near empty? There were two strong defenses the WPA could make. First, the projects themselves were admittedly secondary to the chief aim of the WPA: To put people to work and to inject money into the economy. Also, the new-fangled privies did have a serious purpose. Tens of thousands of man-hours of labor were lost each year in rural America because of preventable diseases. Privies contaminated wells. Hookworms bred in and near privies. When privy roofs leaked, the rain water ran through the "tank" and then flowed out to poison streams and wells. By building modern privies with roofs that wouldn't leak and cement floors that hookworms couldn't penetrate, the WPA prevented a great deal of suffering and helped bring rural America into modern times.
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Still, there is no getting away from the fact that the WPA outhouse story is a terrific metaphor for the whole Franklin Roosevelt New Deal program. Those who hate all big government programs under any circumstances will enjoy talking about this chapter of American history, the ultimate explanation of what can happen when government programs are allowed to expand unchecked. Those who defend government programs to help the poor and unemployed will counter that both were helped here. Farm children need no longer be stunted by hookworm, while unemployed men would not have to choose between starvation or "going on the dole."
Next time you're in Acton, Indiana, stop in at the Acton Cemetery, where the only "facilities" available are provided by a WPA outhouse that it still standing. The outhouse is a two-holer, able to accommodate both an adult and (by the smaller hole) a child. Unfortunately the original wood siding has given way to corrugated steel, but otherwise the outhouse looks not too very different from the Roosevelt Privy pictured on the button!
| © 1996 by Stephen Cresswell |
Sources: Sylvia C. Henricks, "WPA 'Roosevelt Houses' Upgraded Sanitation, Antique Weekly, May 15, 1995. Donald S. Howard, The WPA & Federal Relief Policy (888 pages!). Postcard and button used as illustrations were from the inventory of Cresswell's List.