New Deal Programs
Act or Program | Acronym | Year Enacted | Significance |
Agricultural Adjustment Act | AAA | 1933 | Protected farmers from price drops by providing crop subsidies to reduce production, educational programs to teach methods of preventing soil erosion. |
Civil Works Administration | CWA | 1933 | Provided public works jobs at $15/week to four million workers in 1934. |
Civilian Conservation Corps | CCC | 1933 | Sent 250,000 young men to work camps to perform reforestation and conservation tasks. Removed surplus of workers from cities, provided healthy conditions for boys, provided money for families. |
Federal Emergency Relief Act | FERA | 1933 | Distributed millions of dollars of direct aid to unemployed workers. |
Glass-Steagall Act | FDIC | 1933 | Created federally insured bank deposits ($2500 per investor at first) to prevent bank failures. |
National Industrial Recovery Act | NIRA | 1933 | Created NRA to enforce codes of fair competition, minimum wages, and to permit collective bargaining of workers. |
National Youth Administration | NYA | 1935 | Provided part-time employment to more than two million college and high school students. |
Public Works Administration | PWA | 1933 | Received $3.3 billion appropriation from Congress for public works projects. |
Rural Electrification Administration | REA | 1935 | Encouraged farmers to join cooperatives to bring electricity to farms. Despite its efforts, by 1940 only 40% of American farms were electrified. |
Securities and Exchange Commission | SEC | 1934 | Regulated stock market and restricted margin buying. |
Social Security Act | 1935 | Response to critics (Dr. Townsend and Huey Long), it provided pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid to blind, deaf, disabled, and dependent children. | |
Tennessee Valley Authority | TVA | 1933 | Federal government build series of dams to prevent flooding and sell electricity. First public competition with private power industries |
Wagner Act | NLRB | 1935 | Allowed workers to join unions and outlawed union-busting tactics by management. |
Works Progress Administration | WPA | 1935 | Employed 8.5 million workers in construction and other jobs, but more importantly provided work in arts, theater, and literary projects. |
Please cite this source when appropriate:
Feldmeth, Greg D. "U.S. History Resources"
http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/USHistory.html (31 March 1998).