Government and Business After the Depression

Report Outline
President Roosevelt and Future of the N. R. A.
Plans for Permanent Regulation of Industry
Government Control and the Monopoly Question
The N. R. A. And Long-Range Planning

President Roosevelt and Future of the N. R. A.

A report published by the National Recovery Administration on December 31, 1933, stated that from 18,000,000 to 20,000,000 of the estimated total of 24,000.000 workers directly affected by the N. R. A. program were working Tinder codes of fair competition at the close of the year. Completion of the task of codification by the end of January was forecast. Virtually the whole of American industry and trade will then be operating under restrictions fixing minimum wages and maximum hours of labor and outlawing specified unfair trade practices. Under the law as it now stands, all of these restrictions would be automatically lifted on June 16, 1935, when the National Industrial Recovery Act is due to expire by limitation. While no move to extend application of the statute beyond that date is anticipated at the present session of Congress, alteration of a few of its provisions may be effected in the coming months. The action so taken and the debate that accompanies it is likely to furnish some indication of what the next Congress will do, a year hence, in determining the future relations between the federal government and private business.

That there will be no return to the conditions prevailing prior to adoption of the N. R. A. program, even should recovery be substantial and widespread by the spring of 1935, now seems certain. In his annual message to Congress on January 3, President Roosevelt said:

Though the machinery, hurriedly devised, may need readjustment from time to time, nevertheless I think you will agree with me that we have created a permanent feature of our modernized industrial structure and that it will continue under the supervision but not the arbitrary dictation of government itself.