3 - Deployments in the second half of 1933

Summary

Roosevelt's bombshell message to the London Economic Conference made clear that he was not willing to make commitments abroad that might put at risk his policies at home. The precise form that his domestic initiatives were to take had yet to be determined. The president did not suffer from a shortage of counsel about how the affairs of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration should be conducted or about what to do next with respect to the international exchange value of the dollar. These issues were to be at the top of the agenda for the remainder of 1933.

Activating the National Recovery Administration

Roosevelt told the nation in July 1933 that the National Industrial Recovery Program reflected careful planning for a “logical whole” of measures. This put a strain on reality: The scissors and paste character of the act hardly justified such a description. This legislation, it will be recalled, had two central features. The first was concerned with the apparatus for code making, to be conducted under the supervision of a National Recovery Administrator. The second provided $3.3 billion to be spent under the direction of a Public Works Administrator. Some involved in shaping the language of the National Industrial Recovery Act – among them Alexander Sachs, who served as NRA's first Director of Research – did indeed regard these provisions as constituting a “logical whole.”