Schechter Poultry's Sick Chicken: How the Blue Eagle NRA Was Struck Down

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In June 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, the climax of his first 100 days. Advisors Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell and Hugh S. Johnson blamed the Depression on cutthroat competition and deflation, and with business leaders like Gerard Swope of General Electric and Henry Harriman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce they suspended antitrust law so industries could set fair prices in return for better wages and hours. Senators William Borah, Burton K. Wheeler and Hugo Black warned it would feed monopolies. Title I created the National Recovery Administration under Johnson, while Title II created the Public Works Administration under the cautious Harold Ickes.

The NRA approved 557 basic codes and 189 supplemental codes, banned thousands of business practices and pushed shops to display the Blue Eagle. Section 7(a) promised union rights and set off violent strikes in Toledo and San Francisco, while small firms fled codes written for big business. The end came from the Schechter brothers, kosher poultry butchers in Brooklyn indicted on 60 counts, including selling a diseased bird. In May 1935 Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court that struck down Title I as vague, an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power and an overreach into purely local commerce.

• NRA codes covered industries as specific as macaroni, burlesque theaters and dog food.
• The poultry code's straight killing rule barred customers from picking individual chickens from a coop.
• Hughes wrote that extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.
• A severability clause saved the PWA, which funded the Triborough Bridge, Grand Coulee Dam and the carriers Yorktown and Enterprise.
• A 1934 amendment born of the hot oil crackdown survives as 18 U.S.C. Section 1001, the law used against lying to the FBI.