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. It was proclaimed the symbol of industrial recovery on July 20, 1933 by Hugh Samuel Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration.
Many sources credit advertising art director Charles T. Coiner with the design. According to a few sources, however, it was sketched by Johnson, based on an idea utilized by the War Industries Board during World War I. The eagle holds a gear, symbolizing industry, in its right talon, and bolts of lightning in its left talon, symbolizing power.
All companies that accepted President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Re-employment Agreement or a special Code of Fair Competition were permitted to display a poster showing the Blue Eagle together with the announcement, "NRA Member. We Do Our Part." Consumers were exhorted to buy products and services only from companies displaying the Blue Eagle banner. According to Johnson,
"When every American housewife understands that the Blue Eagle on everything that she permits into her home is a symbol of its restoration to security, may God have mercy on the man or group of men who attempt to trifle with this bird."
On September 5, 1935, following the invalidation of the compulsory code system, the emblem was abolished and its future use as a symbol was prohibited.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1933, DeBenneville "Bert" Bell formed a new National Football League franchise to replace the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets, naming this team the Eagles in recognition of the NRA (a name the team retains to the present).
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or eagle:
“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill’d Bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last Morning’s draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz’d thy parting Soul, and seal’d thee his;”
—Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649)