National Industrial Recovery Act - Implementation

Implementation

Implementation of the Act began immediately. Hugh Johnson spent most of May and June planning for implementation, and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was established on June 20, 1933—a scant four days after the law's enactment. Roosevelt angered Johnson by having him administer only the NRA, while the Public Works Administration (PWA) went to Harold L. Ickes. NRA and PWA reported to different cabinet agencies, making coordination difficult, and PWA money flowed so slowly into the economy that NRA proved to be the more important agency by far.

The premiere symbol of the NIRA was the Blue Eagle.

NIRA, as implemented by the NRA, became notorious for generating large numbers of regulations. The agency approved 557 basic and 189 supplemental industry codes in two years. Between 4,000 and 5,000 business practices were prohibited, some 3,000 administrative orders running to over 10,000 pages promulgated, and thousands of opinions and guides from national, regional, and local code boards interpreted and enforced the Act. The backlash against the Act was so significant that it generated a large loss of political support for the New Deal and turned a number of Roosevelt's closest aides against him. Roosevelt himself shifted his views on the best way to achieve economic recovery, and began a new legislative program (known as the "Second New Deal") in 1935.

Implementation of Section 7(a) of the NIRA proved immensely problematic as well. The protections of the Act led to a massive wave of union organizing punctuated by employer and union violence, general strikes, and recognition strikes. At the outset, NRA Administrator Hugh Johnson naïvely believed that Section 7(a) would be self-enforcing, but he quickly learned otherwise and the National Labor Board was established under the auspices of the NRA to implement the collective bargaining provisions of the Act. The National Labor Board, too, proved to be ineffective, and on July 5, 1935, a new law—the National Labor Relations Act—superseded the NIRA and established a new, long-lasting federal labor policy.

The leadership of the Public Works Authority was torn over the new agency's mission. PWA could initiate its own construction projects, distribute money to other federal agencies to fund their construction projects, or make loans to states and localities to fund their construction projects. But many in the Roosevelt administration felt PWA should not spend money, for fear of worsening the federal deficit, and so funds flowed slowly. Furthermore, the very nature of construction (planning, specifications, and blueprints) also held up the disbursement of money. Harold Ickes, too, was determined to ensure that graft and corruption did not tarnish the agency's reputation and lead to loss of political support in Congress, and so moved cautiously in spending the agency's money. Although the U.S. Supreme Court would rule Title I of NIRA unconstitutional, the severability clause in the Act enabled the PWA to survive. Among the projects it funded between 1935 and 1939 are: the USS Yorktown; USS Enterprise; the 30th Street railroad station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Triborough Bridge; the port of Brownsville; Grand Coulee Dam; Boulder Dam; Fort Peck Dam; Bonneville Dam; and the Overseas Highway connecting Key West, Florida, with the mainland. The agency survived until 1943, when the Reorganization Act of 1939 consolidated most federal public works and work relief functions of the federal government into the new Federal Works Agency.

President Roosevelt sought reauthorization of NIRA on February 20, 1935. But the backlash against the New Deal, coupled with continuing congressional concern over the Act's suspension of antitrust law, left the President's request politically dead. By May 1935, the issue was moot as the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled Title I of NIRA unconstitutional.