Established June 16, 1933 with a primary goal of eliminating “cut throat competition” from industry and labor for the unemployment. using a method of agreement between the federal government and business that would governed prices, wages and business practices thus believed to stimulate the economy. This act had two main sections or “titles” enacted within the act that included:

  • National Recovery Administration (NRA)
  • Public Works Administration (PWA)

Title 1 – National Recovery Administration (NRA)

The NRA was created by the NIRA in order to stimulate the economy by administered a code-writing process and a method to enforce those approved codes nationwide. These codes were based upon each industry’s method of pricing and wages, and then each industry promised to maintain those pricing. Prior to the Supreme Court invalidating the NIRA in May 1935, large public campaigns to support the NRA were used to encourage business of all industries to follow code procedures and display the Blue Eagle as a sign of their cooperation in the NRA.

FDR appointed Hugh S. Johnson, an Oklahoman who was a member of the famed “brain trusts” of Roosevelt’s campaign for president and had extensive knowledge on economic practices that he learned while working closely with the War Industries Board during the First World War. During that time he was serving in the military as a brigadier general and had been promoted to assistant director of the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division on the General Staff. Governor William “Alfalfa Bill” Murray vehemently fought President Roosevelt’s New Deal, mostly because he had lost the 1932 Presidential Election to FDR, did not give any state or local support for the NRA program and as a consequence the NRA had a limited impact on the Oklahoma economy and businesses. Murray delayed any creation of a State Recovery Board that was required by the NIRA and refused to publicize the Blue Eagle Campaign.

Title II – Public Works Administration (PWA)

This multifold purposed agency included large scale construction projects that would stimulate the production and sale of durable goods and materials to be used in construction. This “top-down” or sometimes called “pump priming” type of financial stimulus was to build large, expensive public projects from state government agencies that were required to provide 70 percent in matching, later reduced to 55 percent, funds and would be granted no interest loans from the federal government thus guaranteeing the project success. The state government would then hire contractors though bids and contracts to to perform the construction. It was the belief that large construction need more materials thus would stimulate the economy first by material request then by construction in the area and then need for local material products.

From August 1933 though March 1936 Phillip S. Donnell a former engineering professor at the Oklahoma State University was the Oklahoma State Administrator. In 1937 the PWA was reorganized to group Oklahoma with six other states in a regional PWA. Although the two failing factors of the PWA was the extensive approval process for projects and the difficulty for local governments to raise the requisite matching funds, several million dollars of projects, large and small, were finished in Oklahoma. Some of those projects were:

$11.9 million were authorized in grants and loans by 1935 with $9.5 million was for roads, highways, and crossings.

The PWA continued its activities for 10 years until it was abolished by Executive Order 9357, effective July 1, 1943. During the period of 1940 to 1943 its funds were increasingly redirected away from civic improvements and more towards defense construction. By 1942 the agency had expended more than $6 billion on 34,512 civic projects in 3,068 of the nation’s 3,071 counties. [2]

Sources

  1. William H. Mullins, “National Recovery Administration,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, January 15, 2010
  2. Dianna Everett, “Public Works Administration,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

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