- The CWA's workers laid 12 million feet of sewer pipe and built or improved 255,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,700 playgrounds, and nearly 1,000 airports (not to mention building 250,000 outhouses still badly needed in rural America). The program was praised by Alf Landon, who later ran against Roosevelt in the 1936 election.
Representative of the work are one county's accomplishments in less than five months, from November 1933 to March 1934. Grand Forks County, North Dakota put 2,392 unemployed workers on its payroll at a cost of about $250,000. When the CWA began in eastern Connecticut, it could hire only 480 workers out of 1,500 who registered for jobs. Projects undertaken included work on city utility systems, public buildings, parks, and roads. Rural areas profited, with most labor being directed to roads and community schools. CWA officials gave preference to veterans with dependents, but considerable political favoritism determined which North Dakotans got jobs
The CWA would be replaced by the WPA and focused more on long-term value construction and work. The thing that struck me about this article? "Outhouses." This was about a human lifetime ago, and there are still millions of Americans alive today that grew up with the need for a massive construction push for outhouses.