The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was a New Deal agency established to stimulate the economy through a combination of relief, recovery, and reform efforts aimed at assisting industry, labor, and the unemployed. The NRA would establish codes of fair competition for each industry and provide work for the unemployed, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.

2. A HELPING HAND for INDUSTRY and LABOR
A daring attempt to stimulate a nationwide comeback was initiated by the National
Recovery Administration (NRA). It was to combine immediate relief with long range
recovery and reform. It was designed to assist industry, labor, and the unemployed.
Explain how the NRA was going to be applied to industry, labor, and the unemployed.
The NRA would collapse with the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Schechter v. New
York.
Special stimulants aided the recovery of one segment
of business – the liquor industry. The repeal of
prohibition began with the legalization of light (3.2%)
beer and wine. The govt. imposed a tax on the booze,
bringing-in much needed revenue.
Prohibition was officially repealed by the 21st
Amendment late in 1933.

3. PAYING FARMERS NOT to FARM
Ever since the war-boom days of 1918, farmers had suffered from low prices and over-
production, especially in grain. During the depression, conditions became desperate.
Farmers were destroying crops and preventing the shipment of crops and dairy products.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration ushered in a radical new approach based on
“artificial scarcity” that would establish “parity prices” for agricultural commodities. How
would this work?
Identify and describe the main criticisms of the AAA. What was its fate? Explain
the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act (1936). Explain the second AAA
of 1938.

4. DUST BOWLS & BLACK BLIZZARDS
Nature had been providing some
unplanned scarcity. Late in 1933
a prolonged drought struck the
states of the trans-Mississippi
Great Plains.
Rainless weeks were followed by
furious, whining winds, while the
sun was darkened by millions of
tons powdery topsoil from
homesteads in Missouri, Texas,
Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma –
an area soon dubbed the Dust
Bowl. What was life like in the
“Dust Bowl?”

5. Along with the drought and the wind, the human hand also worked its mischief. High
WWI prices encouraged farmers to plow marginal land, using dry farming techniques,
leaving the powdery topsoil to be swept away at nature’s whim.

6. Burned and blown out of the Dust Bowl, tens of thousands of refugees fled their ruined
acres. In five years about 350,000 “Okies” and “Arkies” trekked to southern California
in “junkyards on wheels.” John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath, portrayed an “Okie”
family’s journey to California. The book became the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Dust Bowl.

7. Zealous New Dealers, sympathetic toward farmers, made various efforts to relieve their
burdens:
•Frazier-Lemke Farm
Bankruptcy Act (1934)
•The Resettlement
Administration (1935)
•CCC activity
Native Americans also felt the far-reaching hand of New Deal reform. Commissioner of
Indian Affairs John Collier ardently sought to reverse the forced-assimilation policies in
place since the Dawes Act of 1887. Explain the Indian Reorganization Act that Collier
promoted. Was it effective?

8. THE TVA HARNESSES the TENNESSEE RIVER
Inevitably, the sprawling electric-power industry attracted the fire of New Deal
reformers. The Tennessee River provided New Dealers with a rare opportunity – how?

9. An act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority was passed in 1933 by the Hundred Days
Congress – who was the catalyst for the project? What were the criticisms of the
project?
The gigantic project not only brought to the area full employment and cheap electricity,
but low-cost housing, abundant cheap nitrates, the restoration of eroded soil,
reforestation, improved navigation, and flood control. Foreigners marveled over the
project.

10. TVA projects were slated to include western areas, thus promoting development. But
conservative reaction against the “socialistic” New Deal would confine the TVA’s brand of
federally guided resource management and comprehensive regional development to the
Tennessee Valley.