Other short titles | Agricultural Adjustment Act Amendment of 1935 |
---|---|
Long title | An Act to amend the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and for other purposes. |
Nicknames | Potato Control Act of 1935 |
Enacted by | the 74th United States Congress |
Effective | August 24, 1935 |
Citations | |
Public law | 74-320 |
Statutes at Large | 49 Stat. 774 aka 49 Stat. 782 |
Codification | |
Titles amended | 7 U.S.C.: Agriculture |
U.S.C. sections created | 7 U.S.C. ch. 29 §§ 801-833 |
Legislative history | |
|
The Potato Control Law (1929) was based upon an economic policy enacted by U.S. President Herbert Hoover's Federal Emergency Relief Administration at the beginning of the Great Depression. The policy became a formal act in 1935, and its legislative sponsors were from the state of North Carolina. [1] Hoover's presidential successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed the Act into law on August 24, 1935. [2]
The law was enforced by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) to protect about 30,000 farmers who made their main living growing potatoes, and who feared that the potato market would be glutted by other farmers whose land had been legislatively idled by other AAA controls. [3]
The law restricted the export of potatoes and mandated that they be used instead to provide direct relief to those in need. Because of the federal government's direct involvement in the economic affairs of American potato growers, this law was widely regarded as one of the most radical and controversial pieces of legislation enacted during the New Deal. The United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1936. [4]
The Potato Control legislation prevented individuals and companies from buying or offering to buy potatoes which were not packed in closed containers approved by the Secretary of Agriculture and bearing official government stamps. Penalties included a $1,000 fine on the first offense, and a year in jail and an additional $1,000 fine for a second offense. Farmers and brokers would not be issued the official stamps unless they paid a tax of $0.45 per bushel, or if they received tax-exemption stamps from the Secretary of Agriculture. [5]
The law sparked considerable protest, as evident in the following 1935 declaration signed by citizens of West Amwell Township, New Jersey:
That we protest against and declare that we will not be bound by the 'Potato Control Law,' an unconstitutional measure recently enacted by the United States Congress. We shall produce on our own land such potatoes as we may wish to produce and will dispose of them in such manner as we may deem proper. [6]
Included in the 1935 Potato Control Act was a provision that created the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, a forerunner to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which provides commodity food items like potatoes to soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and similar organizations that serve meals to the homeless and other individuals in need. [7]
The Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, under the administration of Herbert Hoover, established the Federal Farm Board from the Federal Farm Loan Board established by the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 with a revolving fund of half a billion dollars. The original act was sponsored by Hoover in an attempt to stop the downward spiral of crop prices by seeking to buy, sell and store agricultural surpluses or by generously lending money to farm organizations. Money was lent out to the farmers in order to buy seed and food for the livestock, which was especially important since there had previously been a drought in the Democratic South. However, Hoover refused to lend to the farmers themselves, as he thought that it would be unconstitutional to do so and if they were lent money, they would become dependent on government money.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies that processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, also called "AAA" (1933–1942), an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. The Agriculture Marketing Act, which established the Federal Farm Board in 1929, was seen as an important precursor to this act. The AAA, along with other New Deal programs, represented the federal government's first substantial effort to address economic welfare in the United States.
This section of the timeline of United States history concerns events from 1930 to 1949.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment ActPub. L. 74–461, enacted February 29, 1936) is a United States federal law that allowed the government to pay farmers to reduce production so as to conserve soil and prevent erosion.
Rexford Guy Tugwell was an American economist who became part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first "Brain Trust", a group of Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal. Tugwell served in FDR's administration until he was forced out in 1936. He was a specialist on planning and believed the government should have large-scale plans to move the economy out of the Great Depression because private businesses were too frozen in place to do the job. He helped design the New Deal farm program and the Resettlement Administration that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision. His ideas on suburban planning resulted in the construction of Greenbelt, Maryland, with low-cost rents for relief families. He was denounced by conservatives for advocating state-directed economic planning to overcome the Great Depression.
The Emergency Relief and Construction Act, was the United States's first major-relief legislation, enabled under Herbert Hoover and later adopted and expanded by Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his New Deal.
The Second New Deal is a term used by historians to characterize the second stage, 1935–36, of the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The most famous laws included the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the Banking Act, the Wagner National Labor Relations Act, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the Social Security Act, and the Wealth Tax Act.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 was legislation in the United States that was enacted as an alternative and replacement for the farm subsidy policies, in previous New Deal farm legislation, that had been found unconstitutional. The act revived the provisions in the previous Agriculture Adjustment Act, with the exception that the financing of the law's programs would be provided by the Federal Government and not a processor's tax, and was also enforced as a response to the success of the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936.
In the United States, the farm bill is comprehensive omnibus bill that is the primary agricultural and food policy instrument of the federal government. Congress typically passes a new farm bill every five to six years.
George Nelson Peek was an American agricultural economist, business executive, and civil servant. He was the first administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and the first president of the two banks that would become the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
The New Deal was a series of domestic programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, with the aim of addressing the Great Depression, which began in 1929. Roosevelt introduced the phrase upon accepting the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination, and won the election in a landslide over Herbert Hoover, whose administration was viewed by many as doing too little to help those affected. Roosevelt believed that the depression was caused by inherent market instability, and that massive government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy.
The Frazier–Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act was an Act of Congress passed in the United States in 1934 that restricted the ability of banks to repossess farms.
Donald Randall Richberg was an American attorney, civil servant, and author who was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's key aides and who played a critical role in the New Deal. He co-wrote the National Industrial Recovery Act, was general counsel and executive director of the National Recovery Administration. He also co-authored the Railway Labor Act, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, and the Taft-Hartley Act.
In United States federal agriculture legislation, the Agricultural Adjustment Act Amendment of 1935 made several important and lasting changes to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Act into law on August 24, 1935.
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. It also established a national public works program known as the Public Works Administration (PWA). The National Recovery Administration (NRA) portion was widely hailed in 1933, but by 1934 business opinion of the act had soured.
The first 100 days of the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency began on March 4, 1933, the day Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. He had signaled his intention to move with unprecedented speed to address the problems facing the nation in his inaugural address, declaring: "I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require." Roosevelt's specific priorities at the outset of his presidency were getting Americans back to work, protecting their savings and creating prosperity, providing relief for the sick and elderly, and getting industry and agriculture back on their feet.
The Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 is a United States statute imposing an economic intervention as restrictive measures to control inflationary spiraling and pricing elasticity of goods and services while providing economic efficiency to support the United States national defense and security. The Act of Congress established the Office of Price Administration (OPA) as a federal independent agency being officially created by Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 11, 1941.
The New Deal often encountered heavy criticism, and had many constitutional challenges.
The first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on March 4, 1933, when he was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the second term of his presidency ended on January 20, 1941, with his inauguration to a third term. Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of the largest state, New York, took office after defeating incumbent President Herbert Hoover, his Republican opponent in the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt led the implementation of the New Deal, a series of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to Americans and the American economy during the Great Depression. He also presided over a realignment that made his New Deal Coalition of labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners dominant in national politics until the 1960s and defined modern American liberalism.