I’m reading Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. It led me almost immediately to a debunking of one of the enduring myths of the New Deal: the idea that FDR’s National Recovery Act of 1933, which set production quotas and prices for industry and small business, was strictly voluntary.
Shlaes shows how the NRA, in fact, nationalized everything by bringing twenty-two million workers under its five hundred and fifty-seven basic legal codes. Then the NRA sent out inspectors to make sure employers were complying. The Justice Department prosecuted companies that refused.
"All across the country, the NRA was being litigated," Shlaes writes on page 223 of the paperback edition. Three Jewish butchers in Brooklyn finally brought down the house of cards. They were indicted on sixty felony counts of violating the "voluntary" codes. When they lost in the lower courts, they appealed and won a unanimous victory in the Supreme Court in 1935.
"…some 500 cases against people charged with breaking NRA codes were now to be dropped," Shlaes writes on p. 245.
Instapundit says Socialist Barry should read the book. At least he should read the NRA part of it. When he has time. He’s busy at the moment golfing with one of his tax-cheat enablers.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 