There's also, ominously, someone referred to as "Candidate 5" in the paperwork whose aide offered him a flat-out $50,000 bribe for the appointment.

If that's piddling around, I like to see what you categorize as hard work.

The popular name for the WPA was "We Piddle Around."

my grandfather was employed by the WPA, building infrastructure for national and state parks in ny state. that infrastructure (roads, picnic shelters, hiking trails, bathrooms, camp sites, etc.) made those parks far more accessable than they had ever been, to the average citizen.

that was just a small piece of the WPA's programs. they hired millions, paid them decent wages, which then went into the economy as purchases of food, housing, etc.

this was part of the same program that brought electricity to the rural areas of the country, through the TVA.

Criticism and favoritism
Unlike the quite popular Civilian Conservation Corps, the WPA had numerous conservative critics.

One of the principal criticisms leveled at the program was that it wasted federal dollars on projects that were not always needed or wanted.

A relic of this criticism survives today in the form of a satirical observation that WPA workers were hired 'to rake leaves in the park.'

White-collar WPA projects in particular were often singled out for their sometimes overtly left-wing social and political themes.

One criticism of the allocation of WPA projects and funding was that they were often made for political considerations.

Congressional leaders in favor with the Roosevelt administration, or who possessed considerable seniority and political power often helped decide which states and localities received the most funding.

The most serious criticism was that Roosevelt was building a nationwide political machine with millions of workers.

Some who were critical of the WPA referred to it as "We Poke Along," "We Piddle Along" or "We Putter Around."

This is a sarcastic reference to WPA projects that sometimes slowed to a crawl, because foremen on a government project devised to maintain employment often had no incentive or ability to influence worker productivity by demotion or termination.

This criticism was due in part to the WPA's early practice of basing wages on a "security wage," ensuring workers would be paid even if the project was delayed, improperly constructed, or incomplete.

Other denigrating references to the WPA in popular culture include:

A typical joke was repeated in Harper Lee's 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Bob Ewell, the resident slacker of Maycomb County, is described as "the only person fired from the WPA for laziness."

Ex-Dodger and Giant pitcher Billy Loes, who was selected by the Mets in the 1961 expansion draft, was credited with this quotation: "The Mets is a good thing. They give everybody jobs. Just like the WPA."

The men were put to work in Benton County building roads, bridges, public buildings and digging drainage ditches. The roads were build with picks, shovels and wheel barrows. The pay was .27¢ per hour or $2.16 per day. Many men had to walk three and a half miles to the job.