Federal Emergency Relief Administration

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was the new name given by the Roosevelt Administration to the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA) which President Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

had created in 1932. FERA was established as a result of the Federal Emergency Relief Act and was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

(WPA).

FERA under Hoover gave loans to the states to operate relief programs. One of these, the New York state program TERA (Temporary Emergency Relief Administration), was set up in 1931 and headed by Harry Hopkins

Harry Hopkins

Harry Lloyd Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration , which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country...

, a close adviser to Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

. Roosevelt asked Congress to set up FERA—which gave grants to the states for the same purpose—in May 1933, and appointed Hopkins to head it. Along with the Civilian Conservation Corps

Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D...

(CCC) it was the first relief operation under the New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

.

FERA's main goal was alleviating household unemployment by creating new unskilled jobs in local and state government. Jobs were more expensive than direct cash payments (called "the dole"), but were psychologically more beneficial to the unemployed, who wanted any sort of job, for self-esteem, to play the role of male breadwinner. From May 1933 until it closed in December, 1935, FERA gave states and localities $3.1 billion. FERA provided work for over 20 million people and developed facilities on public lands across the country.

Faced with continued high unemployment and concerns for public welfare during the coming winter of 1933-34, FERA instituted the Civil Works Administration

Civil Works Administration

The Civil Works Administration was established by the New Deal during the Great Depression to create manual labor jobs for millions of unemployed. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter. Harry L. Hopkins was put in charge of the organization. President Franklin D...

(CWA) as a $400 million short-term measure to get people to work. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration was terminated in 1935 and its work taken over by two entirely new federal agencies, the Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

and the Social Security Administration

Social Security Administration

The United States Social Security Administration is an independent agency of the United States federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability, and survivors' benefits...

Projects

FERA operated a wide variety of work relief projects, including construction, projects for professionals (e.g., writers, artists, actors, and musicians), and production of consumer goods. The construction and professional projects elicited criticisms of "make-work," i.e., that little of value was produced. In contrast, the output of the consumer goods production projects was clearly useful, as canned food, garments, mattresses, bedding, and other goods were produced and then distributed to relief recipients. But these projects, termed production-for-use by FERA administrators, came under fire from capitalists for competing with the private sector. As a result, production-for-use projects that capitalists found offensive were terminated by the time the WPA began in late 1935, and no such government production of consumer goods has been repeated since.

Workers' education

Workers' education, a form of adult education, emphasized the study of economic and social problems from the workers' perspective. When the FERA created its adult education program in 1933, workers' education classes were included. Between 1933 and 1943 thirty-six states participated in the federal experiment in workers' education, 17 of them for a full ten years the program existed. With as many as two thousand teachers employed at one time, officials conservatively estimated that the program reached at least one million workers nation-wide until it was ended in World War II. Three distinct phases of a federal workers' education program existed: FERA (1933–1935), Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

(WPA—prior to separation from the other adult education programs, 1935–1939), and WPA Workers' Service Program (1939–1943). FERA and WPA workers' education stimulated educational activities within the labor movement. For example, in Indiana this program was particularly popular among the new, more radical CIO

Congress of Industrial Organizations

The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...

unions. Federal workers' education activities also encouraged union-university cooperation and laid the foundation for labor education at Indiana University. New Dealers designed the WPA Workers' Service Program as the model for a Federal Labor Extension Service, similar to the existing federal agricultural extension program, but it was never implemented.

Women

Ellen S. Woodward was director of women's work for FERA and CWA. During the short lifespan of the CWA, Woodward placed women in such civil works projects as sanitation surveys, highway and park beautification, public building renovation, public records surveys, and museum development. Most were unemployed white collar clerical workers. In July 1934, the FERA established a separate division for professional and nonconstruction projects. Project designers in the division for professional projects faced an enormous challenge in creating effective and meaningful work for unskilled women. In 1935 she became assistant administrator of the WPA, where she directed the income-earning projects of some 500,000 women.

Food

Poor people lacked enough food in the Depression, and farmers had too much. The mismatch was solved by the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC), FERA, and WPA programs which aimed to reduce farm surpluses by government purchase and then redistribution of food to the needy. Three methods of distribution were employed with varying success: direct distribution, food stamps, and school lunches.

Oklahoma

Mullins (1999) examines the hesitant relief efforts of Oklahoma City residents during the early years of the depression, 1930–35, under Governor William H. Murray

William H. Murray

William Henry Davis "Alfalfa Bill" Murray was an American teacher, lawyer, and politician who became active in Oklahoma before statehood as legal adviser to Governor Douglas H. Johnston of the Chickasaw Nation...

, emphasizing the community's reluctance to comply with FERA rules. Fearing that aid recipients would become dependent on their assistance, Oklahoma City administrators sparingly doled out federal and local relief funds; city leaders initiated a campaign to discourage migration into the city; local newspapers failed to print the location of soup lines; voters rejected a bond issue to bolster relief funds; and the city council declined to increase taxes to boost its depression relief budget. At issue was the control over FERA distribution imposed by Governor Murray, and lawmakers' reluctance to meet federal funding match assessments, despite a budget surplus in Oklahoma City and sufficient state funds to reduce property taxes. Although he criticized the welfare bureaucracy, Murray championed the state's yeoman farmers and took credit for the food, seed, and books that they received from federal funds. New Deal administrators ultimately removed Murray from his oversight role, charging corruption in aid distribution, failure to meet employment quotas, and the inability to determine local funding needs.

Nebraska

In Nebraska Democratic Governor Charles W. Bryan (brother of William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...

and the party's Vice President nominee in 1924) was at first unwilling to request aid from the Hoover administration. When Roosevelt's FERA became law in 1933 Nebraska took part. Rowland Haynes, the state's emergency relief director, was the major force in implementing such national programs as the FERA and CWA. Robert L. Cochran, who became governor in 1935, was a "cautious progressive" who sought federal assistance and placed Nebraska among the first American states to adopt a social security law. The enduring impact of FERA and social security in Nebraska was to shift responsibility for social welfare from counties to the state, which henceforth accepted federal funding and guidelines. The change in state and national relations may have been the most important legacy of these New Deal programs in Nebraska.

Tenant farmers

FERA made welfare payments to Southern tenant farmers 1933-35, with the distribution of money across states and counties was strongly influenced by state governments and the influential planter class. Their interests rested mainly in not allowing federal welfare to undermine their authority and the economic structure that favored landowners. Tenant farmers, however, exerted significant counterpressure by organizing the Southern Tenant Farmers Union

Southern Tenant Farmers Union

The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union was founded in 1934 as a civil farmer's union to further organize the tenant farmers in the Southern United States....

and the Alabama Sharecroppers Union under the auspices of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. The unions agitated for welfare assistance, and their events and campaigns drew national publicity. While tenant farmers remained terribly disadvantaged politically, their collective efforts improved matters substantially in areas where their organizations were strongest.

Key West

Julius Stone, Jr., changed the economic direction of Key West, Florida, when he was the director of the southeast region of FERA. In 1934, Key West went bankrupt and state turned the city over to the FERA in a dubious constitutional move. Within two years, Stone had reversed the economic disaster and successfully moved the city into tourism.

Primary sources

Hopkins, Harry L. Spending to save: the complete story of relief. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1936.
Kirk, J.S. ed.Emergency Relief in North Carolina a Record of the Development and the Activities of the North Carolina Emergency Relief Administration 1932-1935 (1936) 544pp; complete text online
McElvaine, Robert S. Down & out in the Great Depression: Letters from the "Forgotten Man" (1983); letters to Harry Hopkins; online edition

External links

http://content.lib.washington.edu/feraweb/essay.html program description
University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Federal Emergency Relief Administration Photographs Essay on the program and images documenting the Federal Emergency Relief Administration program in King County, Washington, 1933-35.
ERA and FERA in Utah

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Projects

Workers' education

Women

Food

Oklahoma

Nebraska

Tenant farmers

Key West

See also

Primary sources

External links