How the New Deal built N.C.

Have you ever been to a Broadway musical at Memorial Auditorium? Gone hiking in Umstead State Park? Seen a play at the Raleigh Little Theater?

If so, you have benefited from the granddaddy of all stimulus packages passed by Congress to revive a staggering economy.

President-elect Barack Obama is promising a major program of public works to help put Americans back to work. Last week, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley urged the state's congressional delegation to support such a package.

All of this is reminiscent of the 1930s, when President Franklin Roosevelt proposed huge new spending programs to get the country out of the economic ditch.

The New Deal programs poured an estimated $428 million into North Carolina from 1933 to 1938 (roughly $6.4 billion in today's dollars), according to historians Hugh Lefler and Ray Newsome.

The federal programs had an impact in ways you might not imagine. New Deal programs, for example, were instrumental in creating the state's two major cultural institutions -- the N.C. Symphony and the N.C. Museum of Art.

The reason for the New Deal spending, of course, was the Great Depression, which saw farm prices collapse, banks close, and mills shut down.

Roosevelt, who was immensely popular in North Carolina, created a series of national programs to put people to work. They included the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration.

Armies of unemployed were set to work on public works projects that have helped define the modern North Carolina landscape.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was built. Costumes for "The Lost Colony" production in Manteo were made. Fort Macon was restored.

Public works projects included Mount Mitchell State Park and the migratory bird refuge at Swan Quarter. In fact, much of today's state and federal park system, including Pisgah National Forest, the Appalachian Trail, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Hanging Rock and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, is a product of New Deal programs.

The WPA built 14,500 miles of highways, roads and streets and about 700 bridges across North Carolina. The program erected nearly 1,000 buildings, including city halls, courthouses, National Guard armories, schools, hospitals, airports, and even N.C. State's Riddick Stadium.

In all, it is estimated that New Deal programs employed 225,000 North Carolinians during the 1930s and 1940s.

Conservatives such as then-U.S. Sen. Josiah Bailey, a Democrat from Raleigh, worried about the cost of the millions being spent, whether the projects were boondoggles, whether it encouraged laziness and whether it produced shoddy work.

North Carolina received less New Deal aid per capita than any other state. One reason was conservative opposition to big government programs. Another was that North Carolina was so poor it had difficulty coming up with the required matching money.

But New Deal programs such as the National Youth Administration had a deep impact on many lives, even some famous ones.

Richard Nixon, a Duke law student, earned $30 a month working in the school library. Jesse Helms, a Wake Forest College student, made $18.75 per month doing sports publicity. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Terry Sanford worked in the Swain Hall dining room. They were all federal New Deal jobs.