Editing Federal Project Number One (section)

==Controversy==
Many people{{Such as?|date=October 2022}} were opposed to government involvement in the arts. They{{Who|date=October 2022}} feared that government funding and influence would lead to censorship and a violation of freedom of speech. Members of the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]]  believed the program to be infiltrated by communists.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Don Adams|first=Arlene Goldbard|date=March 2013|title=Webster's World of Cultural Democracy|url=http://www.wwcd.org/policy/US/newdeal|journal=New Deal Cultural Programs."|via=WWCD}}</ref>

However, with support from [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Franklin Roosevelt]] signed the executive order to create this project because the government wanted to support, as ''Fortune'' magazine stated, “the kind of raw cultural material—the raw material of new creative work—which is so necessary to artists and particularly to artists in a new country.”<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cole|first=John|date=Fall 1983|title=Amassing American "Stuff": The Library of Congress and the Federal Arts Projects of the 1930s|jstor=29781993|journal=The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress|volume=40|issue=4 |pages=356–389}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=Most of the newspapers and magazines in America were Republican and anti-Roosevelt, and they made what capital they could out of traditional American Philistinism. The Art Projects were scorned as "boondoggling." Under this constant and relentless attack it was necessary to develop work projects that could be defended as "worthwhile." For the project to have sent every artist home to paint his own pictures his own way without supervision or accountability would have invited disaster. Mural projects were a little less liable to charges of boondoggling than easel painting. They were relatively public and subject to scrutiny and criticism.|author=Edward Laning|source=“When Uncle Sam Played Patron of the Arts: Memoirs of a WPA Painter”}}