In June 1933 Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The NIRA declared a national emergency because of the Great Depression. It was designed to revive industry and business and to reduce unemployment through industrial self-regulation. The NIRA created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which established industry-wide codes. Each industry established fair competition codes to stabilize production and prices. The codes also established minimum wages and maximum hours for laborers. The agency ultimately established some 550 basic codes and more than 200 supplementary codes that affected about 22 million workers. Companies that subscribed to the NRA codes were allowed to display a blue eagle, a symbol of cooperation with the NRA. The NIRA also guaranteed labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively. Title II of the NIRA established the Public Works Administration (PWA). The goal of the PWA was to provide jobs and stimulate the economy by hiring people for public-works projects such as building roads and public buildings. Between 1933 and 1939, the PWA spent more than $4 billion on some 34,000 projects. In 1935 the Supreme Court ruled in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. U.S. that Section 3 of the NIRA was unconstitutional. Section 3 had allowed the president to implement the industrial codes. The Court argued that with the NIRA the executive branch had assumed too much legislative power. Thus, the NRA was invalidated.
