New Deal

New Deal

Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was created to help relieve Americans and get the economy out of a depression. But many of FDR’s acts of the New Deal were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. One of the unconstitutional acts was the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The NRA was created in 1933 and set minimum wages for workers and maximum hours of work in a week. Also, it allowed business leaders to set minimum prices of a particular product. The first director of the NRA was Hugh S. Johnson, an extremely successful businessman. Half a year after the NRA was introduced, production dropped by one quarter, and increased “doing business’ by forty percent. But by the time it was deemed unconstitutional it increased industrial production by twenty-two percent. In May 1935, the United States Supreme Court ruled that parts of the NRA were unconstitutional in the case Schechter v. United States. Huey Long embraced this ruling as he said that the rulings save the United States from fascism. The Supreme Court ruled that the NRA gave the President too much power, and it offset the balance of powers between the three branches of government. The court invalidated the fixed wages and prices. President Roosevelt’s revisions to the National Recovery Administration popped up in the Wagner Act of 1935; which gave the industrial workers to organize unions for their specific line of work. This allowed the union to engage in collective bargaining agreements and take part in peaceful strikes.

Another act that was struck down by the Supreme Court was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). This act was created in May of 1933, and allowed the government to pay farmers not to grow crops in an attempt to raise crop prices. The government paid farmers to keep some of their fields unused. The AAA oversaw the destruction of crops and livestock to reduce surpluses. In 1933, the AAA demanded the slaughtering of over two hundred thousand pregnant cows and six million piglets....

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