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National Recovery Administration (NRA)
Administrator: Gen. Hugh S. Johnson (ret.)
Dates: 1933-1935
| The National Recovery Administration (NRA)
had the job of gathering representatives from various industries
together to draw up fair practice codes. These codes would help
eliminate the harmful aspects of competition by establishing minimum
prices and wages. Businesses could then rest easy, secure in the
knowledge that their "competitors" would not try to undersell them.
In return for signing one of the codes, a business or industry
was entitled to fly the flag of the
blue eagle--the symbol of the NRA. Why a flag? Well, the
government
didn't require business and industry to sign the codes--it was strictly
voluntary--but
hoped that public patriotism would lead consumers to patronize only
those
establishments cooperting with the New Deal. (Consumers, too,
could
sign a pledge to patronize only NRA stores.) The NRA program
initially
garnered a lot of enthusiasm, particularly among small businessmen, but
it
quickly ran into problems. For example, it was difficult to
gather
members of a particular industry, large and small, who'd competed
against
each other for years, and get them to agree on common standards.
Bigger
businesses, for example, could afford lower prices and wages than a
smaller
business. Some industries objected to the NRA on principle, since
it
would hamper their ability to control their business. Finally,
many
did not want to agree to allow their workers to join unions, which was
a
guarantee under Section 7 (a). Soon, many businesses who had
signed the codes ceased to observe them because they believed too many
of their competitors
were cheating, or because they believed they program was not working
overall.
The issue became moot in May of 1935 when the Supreme Court
declared
the NRA unconstitutional in the Schechter decision. The Court
said
the NRA had violated existing anti-trust laws by hampering competition.
Ironically,
at the time of the Court's decision, many industries had still not
signed
any code. |
 Above: A business flies the blue eagle flag of the NRA. |
Public Works Administration
Administrator: Harold Ickes
Dates: 1934-1949**
(**these dates are vague, as many PWA projects were later subsumed by other federal agencies, such as the WPA and the FWA, but the National Archives and Record Administration lists the termination date for PWA records as 1949)
| The PWA dispensed over $3 billion to the
states in a series of public works projects designed to stimulate the
local economy. Headed by Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes,
the PWA, like other programs of the First New Deal, operated through
the states. State PWA committees submitted projects to the PWA,
and if the project met government criteria, then the PWA would disburse
money to that state for the project. Many communities submitted
projects to build schools and hospitals (or improve existing ones) or
to build bridges and roads. The process was cumbersome, made even
more so by Ickes' extreme caution in handing out funds. In short,
the federal structure of the PWA (the system of working trough the
state is ironically termed federalism) blunted the purpose of
the PWA, which was to spur immediate economic recovery. Later,
many of the PWA projects were taken over by an agency of the Second New
Deal, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was operated
directly from Washington, D. C. |
 |
 Above, left: The old Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Above, right: The new Charity Hospital, built with PWA funds. It still stands today. |
 |
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