FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 227quite competent to manage their own affairs.”
The federal government had entered the lives of ordinary citizens by pro-
viding them relief aid. The average rural rehabilitation budget for a farm
family [and as of December 1935 there were 132,000 in the program with
thousands more projected to join] was not extravagant: farm equipment and
work stock, $440; livestock, $70; feed, seed, fertilizers, $110; maintenance
during growing season, $100; administration, $55; total $775. Of the total,
about $210 was financed by loans through local agencies or other federal
agencies. The other $465 came as a loan through state rural rehabilitation
corporations, financed by the federal government. Again, farm families
received loans rather than aid from the federal government, a much different
set of conditions than, say, industries had with the NIRA. Loans created
another condition. Jobless farmers often had no way to repay the loans
extended to them by the federal government and local agencies. They
needed jobs and often got work through the WPA, which gave them wages
and helped improve drought conditions and prevention by building projects
like dams and levees.
Farmers hit with the drought—that is, land-owning farmers who had a
family—were put to work by the thousands through the WPA. Farmers began
constructing and improving national infrastructure, erecting government
buildings as they earned paychecks from the federal government to pay off
loans underwritten by the federal government. By the summer of 1935, an
impressive list of accomplishments, related to the dust bowl, under the WPA
appeared: 2,161 miles of levees built, 399 miles improved; 227 miles of riprap
built, 80 miles improved; 42 miles of retaining wall built; 113 miles improved;
582 miles of bulkheads constructed, 14 miles improved; 452 miles of river
dredged. Other men worked restoring bridges and roads, repairing water
mains and sewers, burning dead animals, and dispersing chloride and lime for
disinfection. Water conservation was a major objective of the WPA. By the
summer of 1935, over 2,000 small dams were constructed on both public and
private properties. Thousands and thousands of farm and garden pounds were
dug—1,550 in Kansas alone. Completed WPA projects in water conservation
alone made for a remarkable total: 3,118 dams built, 184 improved; 4,927
wells built, 1,159 improved; 116 lakes built, 69 improved; 932 storage reser-
voirs built, 200 improved; 4,390 ponds and waterholes built. Erosion control
made for a similarly lengthy list: 3,084 erosion control projects, 525 square