1934 Franlin D. Roosevelt - National Industrial Recovery Act

 

As part of the "first new deal", Franklin Delano Roosevelt worked very closely and aggressively with congress to pass legislation that dealt with various groups from banking and railroads to industry and farming. The aim was economic survival. To stimulate business recovery through fair-practice codes the NRA was established as an essential element in the National Industry Recovery Act. The act authorized the president to institute industry-wide codes intended to eliminate unfair trade practices, reduce unemployment, establish minimum wages and guarantee the right of collective bargaining. Companies that subscribed to the NRA codes were allowed to display a Blue Eagle emblem. While the codes did improve labor conditions, most of the codes were hastily drawn and overly complicated. They reflected the interests of big business at the expense of the consumer and small businessman. The NRA ended when it was invalidated by the Supreme Court one year later in 1935.

 Franklin Delano Roosevelt congratulated congress on establishing this program in his 1934 address:

 "We have made great strides toward the objectives of the National Industrial Recovery Act, for not only have several millions of our unemployed been restored to work, but industry is organizing itself with a greater understanding that reasonable profits can be earned while at the same time protection can be assured to guarantee to labor adequate pay and proper conditions of work. Child labor is abolished. Uniform standards of hours and wages apply today to 95 percent of industrial employment within the field of the National Industrial Recovery Act. We seek the definite end of preventing combinations in furtherance of monopoly and in restraint of trade, while at the same time we seek to prevent ruinous rivalries within industrial groups which in many cases resemble the gang wars of the underworld and in which the real victim in every case is the public itself."

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14683
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/405302/National-Recovery-Administration-NRA