Books: WPAccounting

• Share

Without an iota of ceremony, the biggest literary project in history was last week being laid to rest. In Washington D.C.'s WPA headquarters last rites were being said over the Federal Writers' Project.

Burial arrangements were in charge of one of the most unfunereal of U.S. authors — Lyle Saxon, whose literary merit (Old Louisiana, Fabulous New Orleans, Children of Strangers) has long been overshadowed by his reputation as a wit and New Orleans host. Assisting WPA's George Field in preparing the final report on all WPA activity in the 48 States, Saxon hoped to write FINIS to the Federal Writers' Project within a short time.

For a total expenditure of $27,189,370, the Project published enough written matter to fill seven 12 -ft. shelves in the library of the Department of the Interior. Even this mammoth collection is incomplete. Author Saxon, as executor, could draw up this inventory:

> A grand total of approximately a thousand publications, including pamphlets.

> A guidebook for each of the 48 States, the U.S. Territories.*

> Some 30 book-length city guides, such as those for New Orleans, San Francisco, Key West, etc.

> Twenty other guides such as U.S. One; Maine to Florida, The Oregon Trail, Here's New England, etc.

> One hundred fifty volumes in the series Life In America, ranging from Cavalcade of the American Negro to Baseball in Old Chicago.

The sum of $27,189,370 divided by 1,000 publications equals $27,189.37 in any schoolboy's arithmetic. This figure includes administrative costs. The cost per word of the State Guides was admittedly high by comparison with other types of books—particularly because of the staggering research job involved.

Credit for planning the State Guide series goes to the Project's first national director, slow-moving, slow-speaking Henry Alsberg. He understood that U.S. citizens wanted more information about their country than could be had in filling-station handouts, Chamber of Commerce booklets, and the last (1909) edition of the U.S. Baedeker. (Admitting U.S. travel was "as safe as in the most civilized parts of Europe," Baedeker told his readers they could leave their firearms at home, advised them to bring their own matches, buttons, ribbons, dress gloves.)

Director Alsberg, onetime newsman and Provincetown Theater director, soon had a Writers' Project in every city of 10,000, at least one writer or field worker in each of the U.S.'s 3,000 counties. He defended himself and his Project against charges of boondoggling and radicalism until 1939 when he retired to make way for John Dimmock Newsom, under whom most of the State Guides appeared.

Peak employment of the Project was in March 1936, when the payroll numbered 7,535. The Project included beached newsmen, unpublished poets and novelists, high-school teachers, graduates of schools of journalism who had never held jobs, a great crowd of people who had always "wanted" to write.

It also included a sprinkling of first-rate professionals down on their luck, a number of talented unknowns like Negro Novelist Richard Wright, whose first book, Uncle Tom's Children, won a $500 prize from Story Magazine. Writers received prevailing WPA wages, averaging $93 a month in northern cities, $85 elsewhere.