The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a federal program created during the GREAT DEPRESSION, a time of severe UNEMPLOYMENT, that was intended to stimulate the economy and boost morale by paying unemployed laborers and artisans to do useful projects. Approved by Congress on April 8, 1935, as part of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the WPA, renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939, was one of the key components of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program. The importance Roosevelt attached to the program is illustrated by the fact that he appointed one of his closest lieutenants, Harry Hopkins, to lead the WPA until 1938. Over its seven years of existence, the WPA’s building program included the construction of 116,000 buildings, 78,000 bridges, and 651,000 miles of road as well as the improvement of 800 airports. Altogether more than 8.5 million people worked for the WPA, with 3.5 million employed at its peak. The WPA’s National Youth Administration gave work to nearly 1 million students. Federal funding totaled $11 billion. In addition to its sizable building program, the WPA’s Federal Theater, Arts, Music and Writers’ Projects supported cultural initiatives around the country. Rising authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and eventual Nobel laureate Saul Bellow wrote state guidebooks and recorded the life stories of more than 10,000 men and women from a variety of regions, occupations, and ethnic groups. Although the WPA was very popular among the workers and communities it benefited, it was frequently attacked by President Roosevelt’s enemies, particularly those in Congress who charged that it led to waste and political manipulation. The WPA was finally disbanded in 1943 as wartime PRODUCTION demands greatly reduced unemployment.