n and about one-sixth of home mortgages through the HomeOwners Loan Corporation. The Works Progress Administration employed an average ofover 2 million people in occupations ranging from laborers to musicians and writers. ThePublic Works Administration spent about $4 billion on the construction of highways andpublic buildings in the years 1933-39. The depression years saw a burst of unionorganizing, aided by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. New industrial unionscame into existence through the efforts of organizers led by John L. Lewis, WalterReuther, Philip Murray, and others; in 1937 they won contracts in the steel and autoindustries. Total union membership rose from about 3 million in 1932 to over 10 million in1941. The expanded role of the federal government came to be accepted by mostAmericans by the end of the 1930s. Even Republicans who had bitterly opposed the NewDeal shifted their stance. Wendell Wilkkie, the Republican presidential nominee in 1940,declared that he could not oppose reforms such as the regulation of the securities marketsand the utility holding companies, the legal recognition of unions, or Social Security andunemployment allowances. What bothered him and other opponents of the New Deal,however, was the extension of the federal bureaucracy. The depression caused muchquestioning of inherited economic and political ideas. Sen. Huey P. Long of Louisianafound a national following for his "Share the Wealth" program. The socialist writer Upton Sinclair was nearly elected governor of California in 1934 with a similar programfor redistributing the state's wealth. Many writers and other intellectuals swung evenfurther left, concluding that capitalism was on its way out; they were drawn to theCommunist party by what they supposed to be the accomplishments of the USSR. In othercountries the depression had even more profound effects. As world trade fell off, countriesturned to nationalist economic policies that only...
