Public Works: Hazards of Uneconomical Construction

The magnitude of the unemployment problem which faced the present Administration when it came into power, the country-wide extent of the relief program, the fact that billions of dollars have been paid out since 1933 either in the form of direct relief or for many hundreds of projects of work relief, and the multitude of different agencies for the distribution of relief funds all of these influences have tended to divert the attention of the general public from the vast program of major public works which has been entered upon as part of the relief program by various Federal agencies.

Many of these great undertakings are wholly unknown to the public. Where they are located; what they are for; the great magnitude of some of them; the cost of them running into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars; the annual costs of interest, maintenance, and operation that will be incurred after they are completed; the assurance that they have of success or failure-all of these phases of the problem are a closed book to the great majority of taxpayers. The non-technical visitor to the construction work is awed by the immensity of it and is furnished with printed information, some of it in the nature of propaganda, which emphasizes the great size but is silent on all matters of economics.