U.S. National Recovery Administration Printed Documents from the Division Review

The National Recovery Administration, also known as the NRA, was the first of several agencies to be established under authority of the National Industrial Recovery Act (48 Stat. 195), approved on June 15, 1933. Headed by an Administrator for Industrial Recovery (Gen. Hugh S. Johnson) and subject to the general supervision at first of a Special Industrial Recovery Board (consisting of the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Agriculture, the Interior, Commerce and Labor the Director of the Budget, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Conmission, and the Administrator for Industrial Recovery) and later of the National Emergency Council, the function of the NRA was to carry out the main provisions of title I of the Recovery Act. The program of the NRA had four main objectives: (l) To spread work by reducing the number of hours; (2) to increase consumer purchasing power by increasing total wage distribution; (3) to stop trade practices that were similar to those already recognized as legally unfair and to limit the severity of competition without raising prices so drastically as to neutralize the increase in total wages; and (4) to eliminate child labor.

As a means of attaining these objectives, the N.R.A. planned for the adoption of a series of codes of fair competition for the separate regulation of every important branch of trade and industry. During the period from July to October 1933 an intensive drive was made for signatures to the President's Reemployment Agreement and for popular support of its provisions.

An administrative staff was created in April 1934 to act in the name of the Administrator on all subjects assigned to it. This staff consisted of the Administrative Officer, the Review Officer (head of the Reviev Division, created in February 1943), a Special Assistant Administrator, an Assistant Administrator for Policy, the General Counsel (head of the Legal Division), the Economic Adviser (head of the Research and Planning division), a Publicity Adviser, and a Director of Enforcement.

On May 27, 1935, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Schechter case, invalidating all the codes and those portions of the Recovery Act upon which they were founded. In the light of this decision the NRA began at once to reduce its staff. A considerable part of its field, and headquarters personnel was retained to carry out such remnent functions as had escaped the interdict and such new duties as were assigned to the agency by Congress or the President.

A Senate Joint Resolution, approved June 14, 1935, extended title I of the Recovery Act until April 1,1935, expressly repealing, however, those parts of the original act that delegated power to the President to approve or prescribe codes of fair competition or that provided for the enforcement of such codes.

The National Recovery Administration was, of course, reorganized. The Agency was placed under an administrator and a few of the divisions continued, but on a diminished scale. Most of the remaining personnel were absorbed! by two large new divisions, the Division of Business Cooperation arid the Division of Review. The Division of Reviev was established to assemble, analyse, and report upon the statistical information and records of experience of the operations of the various trades and industries formerly subject to the codes of fair competition and to review the effects of the administration of Title I of the Recovery Act and the principles and policies put into effect under its authority.

The NRA was formally terminated on January 1, 1936, when. its Division of Review, Division of Business Cooperation, and Advisory Council were transferred to the Department of Commerce for liquidation by the following April 1. The Consumers' Division was transferred at the same time to the Department of Labor.

On April 1, 1936, the President appointed a Committee of Industrial Analysis, composed of the Secretary of Commerce as Chairman, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Labor, and. four additional members from outside the Government to complete the work begun by the Division of Review end to "prepare for the President an adequate and final review of the effects of the administration of title I of the national Industrial Recovery Act." To assist this Committee, a Division of Industrial Economics was created in the Commerce Department. The Committee and its adjunct Division brought their work to a close in February 1937.