Federal Project Number One

WPA Poster
Not to be confused with The Fed One.

Federal Project Number One, also referred to as Federal One (Fed One), is the collective name for a group of projects under the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program in the United States. Of the $4.88 billion allocated by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935,[1] $27 million was approved for the employment of artists, musicians, actors and writers under the WPA's Federal Project Number One.[2]: 44  In its prime, Federal Project Number One employed up to 40,000 writers, musicians, artists and actors because, as Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins put it, "Hell, they’ve got to eat, too".[3] This project had two main principles: 1) that in time of need the artist, no less than the manual worker, is entitled to employment as an artist at the public expense and 2) that the arts, no less than business, agriculture, and labor, are and should be the immediate concern of the ideal commonwealth.[4]

The five divisions of Federal One were these:

All projects were supposed to operate without discrimination regarding race, creed, color, religion, or political affiliation.[2]: 44 

Federal Project Number One ended in 1939 when, under pressure from Congress, the theater project was cancelled and the other projects were required to rely on state funding and local sponsorship.[5]

  1. ^ Roosevelt, Franklin D. (August 26, 1935). "Letter on Allocation of Work Relief Funds". The American Presidency Project. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. Retrieved 2015-03-02.
  2. ^ a b Flanagan, Hallie (1965). Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre. New York: Benjamin Blom, reprint edition [1940]. OCLC 855945294.
  3. ^ Mutnick, Deborah (November 2014). "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project". College English. 77 (2): 124–145. JSTOR 24238170.
  4. ^ Edmonds, Rosalie (Spring 2008). "Documenting the Depression: Wisconsin's WPA Art". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 91 (3): 18–23. JSTOR 25482075.
  5. ^ Hendrickson Jr., Kenneth (Spring 1993). "The WPA Federal Art Projects in Minnesota, 1935-1943". Minnesota History. 53 (5): 170–183. JSTOR 20187801.