Federal Project Number One

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".

[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.

[6] However, with support from Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order to create this project because the government wanted to support, as Fortune magazine stated, “the kind of raw cultural material—the raw material of new creative work—which is so necessary to artists and particularly to artists in a new country.”[7] Most of the newspapers and magazines in America were Republican and anti-Roosevelt, and they made what capital they could out of traditional American Philistinism.

[3] Many people benefitted from these programs and some FWP writers became famous, such as John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston.