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• industry. In St. Joseph County the scale ranged from $55 a month for unskilled laborers to $85 for highly skilled workers; professional and technical workers, such as architects and engineers. earned $94 a month. Administration of direct relief was turned over to state and local governments, in line with Roosevelt's warning that "to dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic . . . . The Federal government must and shall quit this business of [direct] relief." Much criticized and always controversial, the WPA achieved uneven success in giving jobs to the unemployed, depending upon the type of work involved and on local cooperation. No doubt the successive Democratic administrations in Indiana during the New Deal years helped WPA programs flourish in this state." Wayne Coy headed it first, followed by John K. Jennings. Charles Kohler was the administrator in the St. Joseph County office. Street and road repair and improvement offered the largest number of WPA jobs in the county, consistent with trends in the state overall, closely followed, certainly, by park improvements. Much of the latter work from the New Deal years still exists, but the extensive walls, riprap, and characteristic fieldstone structures found in most pre -World War II parks and all along the St. Joseph River have not been well maintained. Eberhart/Petro and Battell parks in Mishawaka probably boast the best extant 11 Quote from Roosevelt. "Annual Message to the Congress. • January 4, 1935," in Rosenman, ed., The Court Disapproves, Vol. 4 of Addresses of Roosevelt, 19-20. See Greiff, "Roads, Rocks, and Recreation: The Legacy of the WPA in Indiana," Traces 3 (Summer 1991), 40-47; Patrick J. Furlong, "Some Notes on the WPA in St. Joseph County," (talk given at IUSB campus, June 1982).