On June 16, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in response to the Great Depression, signed a bill that he saw as the linchpin of the New Deal program, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). This legislation was the boldest effort ever to coordinate the economy of the world’s greatest industrial power. The NIRA was an omnibus bill, that is, one that addresses several diverse concerns, foremost among them the revival of business. It required any industry engaged in interstate commerce to draft a code that would be approved by the president. Each such code would limit production and thereby prevent cutthroat competition, the source of many business failures. The president was authorized to license businesses so as to police recalcitrant firms.

Labor, too, was intended to benefit. By acquiescing in corporate exemption from antitrust laws, labor would be granted the right to bargain collectively “through representatives of their own choosing.” The bill’s famous Section 7 (a) specifically outlawed the so-called yellow dog contract, by which a corporation could prohibit a prospective employee from joining a union. Also illegal was pressuring the employee to join a “company union” sponsored and controlled by management. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) codes would require minimum wages and humane working conditions, thereby preventing the continuation of sweatshop conditions.

The unemployed made up another group that would benefit from the new bill. A last-minute insertion allocated $3.3 billion for a massive works program, soon to be implemented by the Public Works Administration, or PWA. The consumer was not neglected, being aided by the general increase in purchasing power and by a specially created watchdog group, the Consumers Advisory Board.

The act’s success was mixed. It gave jobs to two million relief workers, helped stop a highly destructive deflationary spiral, and improved business ethics. Maximum hours and minimum wages were established, trade unions were encouraged, and child labor and the sweatshop all but abolished. But the NRA failed in its major objective—to speed recovery—and its support of restricted production and price-fixing undoubtedly hindered it.

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