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As part of the New Deal in the United States, the National Recovery Administration (Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act) was developed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Administration. It allowed industries to create "codes of fair competition," which were intended to reduce destructive competition and to help workers by setting minimum wages and maximum weekly hours. Most economic historians consider the NRA to be a resounding failure. The codes allowed cartels to be established in many industries. As these firms increased their prices, sales fell, employment fell and the recovery from the Great Depression stalled.
The NRA, symbolized by the blue eagle, was popular with workers. Businesses that supported the NRA put the symbol in their shop windows and on their packages. Though membership to the NRA was voluntary, businesses that did not display the eagle were urged to be boycotted - making it seem mandatory for survival.
Its director was Hugh S. Johnson, a retired general and successful businessman. Johnson saw the NRA as a national crusade designed to restore employment and regenerate industry.
About 23,000,000 people worked under the NRA fair code. However, violations of codes became common and attempts were made to use the courts to enforce the NRA. The NRA included a multitude of regulations imposing the pricing and production standards for all sorts of goods and services. Individuals were arrested for not complying with these codes. For example, a man named Jack Magid was jailed for violating the "Tailor's Code" by pressing a suit for 35 rather than NRA required 40 cents. John T. Flynn, in The Roosevelt Myth (1944) reported:
- "The NRA was discovering it could not enforce its rules. Black markets grew up. Only the most violent police methods could procure enforcement. In Sidney Hillman’s garment industry the code authority employed enforcement police. They roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books on the instant. Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night. But without these harsh methods many code authorities said there could be no compliance because the public was not back of it."
In 1935 the Supreme Court declared the NRA as unconstitutional by unanimous decision. The reasons given were that many codes were an illegal delegation of legislative authority and the federal government had invaded fields reserved to the individual states. The NRA quickly stopped operations, but many of the labor provisions reappeared in the Wagner Act of 1935.
References
- Best; Gary Dean. Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938. Praeger Publishers. 1991
- Hawley, Ellis W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly Princeton UP (1968)
- Johnson; Hugh S. The Blue Eagle, from Egg to Earth 1935, memoir by NRA director
- Lyon, Leverett S., Paul T. Homan, Lewis L. Lorwin, George Terborgh, Charles L. Dearing, Leon Marshall C.; The National Recovery Administration: An Analysis and Appraisal The Brookings Institution, 1935
- Ohl, John Kennedy. Hugh S. Johnson and the New Deal (1985), academic biography.
- Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. The Coming of the New Deal (1958) pp 87-177 online version
External links
"National Recovery Administration"