The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) or National Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933, was part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. It authorized the President to regulate businesses in the interests of promoting fair competition, supporting prices and competition, creating jobs for unemployed workers, and stimulating the United States economy to recover from the Great Depression. The law created a National Recovery Administration (NRA), an executive agency exercising powers which Congress had delegated to it, to promote compliance on the part of corporations. Firms that voluntarily complied could display the Blue Eagle. Modern scholars argue that the NRA both helped and harmed the economy.^[1] June 16 is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882–April 12, 1945), 32nd President of the United States, the longest-serving holder of the office and the only man to be elected President more than twice, was one of the central figures of 20th century history. ... The New Deal was the title President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to the series of programs he initiated between 1933 and 1938 with the goal of providing relief, recovery, and reform (3 Rs) to the people and economy of the United States during the Great Depression. ... The Great Depression was a decade of unemployment, low profits, low prices, high poverty and stagnant trade that affected the entire world in the 1930s. ... NRA Blue Eagle poster. ... NRA Blue Eagle The Blue Eagle, a blue-colored representation of the American thunderbird, with outspread wings, was a symbol used in the United States by companies to show compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. ...

Description

NRA Blue Eagle poster. This would be displayed in store windows, on packages, and in ads. When printed in color the eagle was blue, hence the name.

The NIRA was strongly supported by leading businessmen, some of whom had helped draft the legislation. Gerard Swope, head of General Electric, was one of the first champions of this legislation—which legalized cartels and encouraged government spending on public works. This increased spending was designed to restore prosperity and benefit General Electric and all businesses. Harry Harriman, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a leading supporter of the legislation, argued that "it constitutes a most important step in our progress towards business rehabilitation." The National Association of Manufacturers opposed passage. After passage a prominent opponent was Henry Ford.^[2] Image File history File links From US Government Archives website, http://www. ... Image File history File links From US Government Archives website, http://www. ... NRA Blue Eagle The Blue Eagle, a blue-colored representation of the American thunderbird, with outspread wings, was a symbol used in the United States by companies to show compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. ... Gerard Swope (1872 - 1957) was a U.S. electronics businessman. ... GE redirects here. ... A cartel is a group of formally independent producers whose goal is to increase their collective profits by means of price fixing, limiting supply, or other restrictive practices. ... Henry Ford (1919) Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. ...

The NRA was famous for its bureaucracy. Journalist Raymond Clapper reported that between 4,000 and 5,000 business practices were prohibited by NRA orders that carried the force of law, which were contained in some 3,000 administrative orders running to over 10,000 pages, and supplemented by what Clapper said were "innumerable opinions and directions from national, regional and code boards interpreting and enforcing provisions of the act." There were also "the rules of the code authorities, themselves, each having the force of law and affecting the lives and conduct of millions of persons." Clapper concluded: "It requires no imagination to appreciate the difficulty the business man has in keeping informed of these codes, supplemental codes, code amendments, executive orders, administrative orders, office orders, interpretations, rules, regulations and obiter dicta." ^[3]

The NIRA was overturned in May 1935 when the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled in the case Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (295 U.S. 495, 1935), sometimes called the "sick chicken" case, that the Act infringed upon states' authority, unreasonably stretched the Commerce Clause, and gave legislative powers to the executive branch in violation of the Nondelegation doctrine. By then the NRA program had become unpopular and there was no effort to rewrite the legislation.^[4] Federal courts Supreme Court Chief Justice Associate Justices Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures (List) State Courts Counties, Cities, and Towns Other countries Politics Portal      The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest judicial body in the... Holding Section 3 of the National Industrial Recovery Act was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the Executive, and was not a valid exercise of congressional Commerce Clause power. ... // The United States Reports, the official reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States Case citation is the system used in common law countries such as the United States, England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia and India to uniquely identify the location of past court... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar). ... Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, known as the Commerce Clause, reads as follows:The Congress shall have Power . ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

There is controversy over the effectiveness of this act.^[5] Section 7(a) helped promote the formation of labor unions, and led to the establishment of the National Labor Board. The act's lack of clarity and enforcement powers regarding unions led to passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, which incorporated Section 7(a). The National Labor Board was the predecessor to the National Labor Relations Board. ... National Labor Relations Act - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...

Notes

1. ^ Remembering George Sutherland: Defender of the Constitution
2. ^ Schlesinger (1958) pp 87-176; Best (1991) 30
3. ^ Claper in Washington Post, Dec. 4, 1934, quoted in Best (1991) 79-80
4. ^ Best (1991) 97-100
5. ^ Schlesinger (1958) pp 172-76

Bibliography

• Best; Gary Dean. Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938. Praeger Publishers. 1991
• Hawley, Ellis The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly Princeton UP (1968) the standard intellectual history
• 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 87-176 online version
• Weinstein, Michael 1980, Recovery and Redistribution under the NIRA. New York, NY: North Holland.

External links

• When the Supreme Court Stopped Economic Fascism in America by Richard Ebeling