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This allows the Federal Reserve Banks to add currency to assets.

Significance: Adding assets helped the banks to meet every legitimate call. This was a reform because it re-established banks. https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/emergency-banking-act-of-1933/#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20the%20Emergency,affairs%2C%20people%20withdrew%20their%20deposits.

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This act was intended to increase farmers' purchasing power by reducing surpluses of agricultural products so the prices would rise back up to give good incomes to the farmers.

Significance: Helped farmers by raising the prices of crops to pay for their land.

Recovery and Relief: These are both because this helped the farmer pay for their land to make more crops and saved this from the Great Depression.

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This act authorizes the distribution of federal aid to the state for relief.

Significance: This helped the unemployed gain new jobs.

Relief: Due to the fact it this helped people after the Great Depression gain more jobs.

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The Correspondence Files of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 1933-1936

Fall 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2 | Genealogy Notes

By John P. Deeben

At the height of the Great Depression in November 1934, Mae E. Sanford of Chicago penned a heartfelt letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House. Using a Biblical allusion to emphasize the dire effects of the Depression on her personal and economic situation, Sanford bluntly asked for help:

My home is heavily mortgaged and I have been a cripple for years. The time is near where I am in fear of being disposed, as it had been hard for me to meet my payments and almost impossible to get along. . . . Dear Mrs. Roosevelt Please help me and let me keep my home after all we are God's children and he teaches us to ask that we shall receive.1

Mrs. Roosevelt passed Sanford's request on to an administrator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) in Washington, D.C., who dutifully advised Sanford to contact her local emergency relief administrator in Chicago for assistance.

The Great Depression was one of the most important events of the mid-20th century, an economic catastrophe that touched all facets of American society. It devastated personal finances (including incomes and investments), drastically restricted national revenue and international trade, and caused unemployment to skyrocket.

Such an all-encompassing event changed family narratives as well. As with any major historical event-and especially those of a decidedly traumatic nature-how relatives responded to or weathered the crisis of the Great Depression formed an essential aspect of family history.

The efforts of the federal government to counteract the Depression through the various programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal-and in particular the work of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration during the depths of the Depression-produced many records that document such personal experiences, offering useful information about individuals and family members at a dramatic moment in history.
The New Deal in Action: FERA Gives Economic Aid
The Federal Emergency Relief Act of May 12, 1933, implemented President Roosevelt's first major initiative to combat the adverse economic and social effects of the Great Depression. The act established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, a grant-making agency authorized to distribute federal aid to the states for relief. By the end of December 1935, FERA had distributed over $3.1 billion and employed more than 20 million people.

FERA assumed the responsibilities of the former Emergency Relief Administration (ERA) that President Herbert Hoover had established to loan federal funds to state governments for their own relief efforts.

In the early years of the Depression, responsibility for emergency relief had rested almost entirely on state and local governments, but swelling unemployment and economic hardship fostered the growing perception that the Depression required a greater, national response. That viewpoint launched Roosevelt into the White House in 1932 and provided the catalyst for his subsequent New Deal programs. 2

In contrast to the ERA's local approach, FERA gave the federal government a more centralized role in economic recovery by allocating (rather than loaning) funds for both direct relief (cash payments to individuals for immediate necessities such as food and shelter) and state-directed work relief (projects intended to get the unemployed back to work, even if only temporarily).

Rather than establish a whole new federal hierarchy, which might delay relief to the general public, FERA assumed oversight of existing state relief programs. To ensure compliance and foster better understanding of relief needs in response to economic and social conditions, FERA established minimum national relief standards and served as a clearinghouse for information on relief problems, policies, and procedures.

By November 1934, FERA had been divided into several divisions that focused on different kinds of relief, including Work; Rural Rehabilitation; Research, Statistics and Finance; and Relations with States (Transients). 3

Another major and innovative-if only fleeting-component of FERA included the Civil Works Administration (CWA), a temporary agency established on November 9, 1933. Conceived in response to the need to put millions of unemployed people immediately back to work during the harsh winter of 1933-1934, the CWA created thousands of construction jobs for unskilled laborers. Projects mainly included building or improving roadways, schools, playgrounds, and airports; laying sewer pipes and masonry walls; or simply raking leaves and shoveling show in public and national parks.

Women employed by the CWA often sewed garments for the destitute. Employing approximately 4 million workers by January 1934, the CWA proved immensely popular among the general public but was nevertheless disbanded by Congress on March 31, 1934, due to increasing political fears that the program would create too much "public" employment centered on temporary work devoid of lasting value. 4

The work of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration eventually came to an end after the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act on May 6, 1935. Permanently shifting the focus of economic recovery from direct relief assistance to enhanced work relief, the act implemented a massive public works program under the direction of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The largest and most ambitious of the New Deal agencies, the WPA essentially resembled a much amplified version of FERA, and by the end of 1935 it had assumed all of its predecessor's relief functions. The WPA even expanded work relief by creating projects for professionals and artisans as well as unskilled laborers, including the Federal Arts Project, the Federal Writers Project, and the Federal Theater Project. The WPA continued until 1943, when the economic boom of America's industrial war effort during World War II finally wiped out the last lingering effects of the Great Depression. 5
Subject Files Reveal Depression Experiences
As soon as FERA opened for business in May 1933, applicants seeking relief assistance flooded the agency's main offices in Washington, D.C., with correspondence, usually addressed to top administrators such as FERA director Harry L. Hopkins. Letters sent directly to Roosevelt at the White House were also forwarded to FERA for a response. All letters received, along with carbon copies of replies, were arranged in the agency's central correspondence file.

Now part of Record Group (RG) 69, Records of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), FERA's central file was divided into two parts, the "Old General Subject Series, March 1933-January 1935" (Entry 8) and the "New General Subject Series, February 1935-1936" (Entry 9). The "Old" series uses an alphabetical arrangement by subject, while the "New" series uses a three-digit decimal classification scheme. General subject series for the central files of the CWA (Entry 2) and the WPA (Entry 11) contained similar arrangements, respectively. 6

The categories or topic headings in the subject series demonstrate various aspects of general relief efforts. In FERA's "Old" subject series, for example, subjects range from such items as "Adjustment Division" cases, "Chattel Mortgages," and "Commissary Complaints" to "Social Work," "Women's Camps," and "Work Relief." Some categories included subtopics as well, such as "Work Relief," which contains not only general correspondence but also letters addressed to federal departments, field representatives, and the White House (including communications relating to a White House Conference on Emergency Needs of Women, held on March 20, 1933).

Correspondence filed under "Rural Rehabilitation" addresses such subtopics as "Appeals for Relief," "Applications of Stranded Families for Land," "Employment," the "Canning Program," "Grape Purchases," "Land for Sale," and "Sub-marginal Land." Categories containing large volumes of correspondence were usually arranged alphabetically by the name of the correspondent. 7

The central files of all three agencies also include a "State" series, which covers administrative matters and reports concerning relief operations within a single state or territory. FERA's "State Series, March 1933-1936" (Entry 10) contains important correspondence with state relief administrators, arranged alphabetically by state or territory and then by decimal scheme according to the following classifications: "General Correspondence" (400), "Rural Rehabilitation" (410), "Transients" (420), "Education" (430), "Medical Care" (440), "Work Relief" (450), and "Complaints" (460).

Some classifications once again include subcategories. "General Correspondence," for example, contains letters relating to "Finance and Statistics," "Policies," "Personnel," and "Field Reports" (with the latter being further divided into reports from field representatives and field examiners). Other "State" correspondence among the central files in RG 69 include "State Series, 1933-34" (Entry 1) for the CWA, and "State Series, 1935-44" (Entry 12) for the WPA. 8
General Subject Series Headings Contain Details on Individuals
Certain headings in the general subject series contain particularly useful details about individual experiences during the Depression. Letters filed under "Appeals and Applications for Employment" readily documented the travails of destitute families, sometimes in colloquial and moving fashion, even if they did not always reveal the end of the story. Similar to Mae Sanford's personal entreaty to Eleanor Roosevelt, S. M. Loey of Iowa Falls, Iowa, wrote to FERA administrator Bruce McClure on April 21, 1934, to request help with the pending foreclosure of his business. Invoking presidential authority to reinforce the legitimacy of his plea, Loey informed McClure that "President Roosevelt said in his fireside speech that if anyone was about to loose [ sic] by foreclosure to refer their troubles to you. I am about to loose my store building where I have all my ovens and machinery and my salesroom for a bakery. . . . I have tried in vain to get help for myself but it is impossible to find a loan." 9

Personal requests for employment, of course, permeate the correspondence. Writing directly to Harry Hopkins to solicit a job on a music project in the Work Division, unemployed musician Simon Bucharoff of Los Angeles emphatically declared his desire to work rather than accept a government handout: "I do not want a dole and basket. I want to work at something constructively and there are many others in my profession who have been placed in the same situation." Hoping to assist his fellow musicians back on their feet, Bucharoff urged Hopkins (with a bit of jingoistic flare) to approve a project "to teach music in all its branches, develop music by Americans and bring it before the public and make a strong attempt at placing American artists in positions now occupied by foreigners." 10

Other artisans and entrepreneurs hoped FERA would finance their ideas and inventions. E. L. Harrison of Portsmouth, Ohio, pitched his plan for "an automatic rat trap" directly to Roosevelt in the belief the President "helped our Country and our Oeople more than any other living man, and mayb [ sic] you might be able to help me out of the rut, in some way or other." 11

Letters in the "Rural Rehabilitation" category convey details about FERA's efforts to place destitute families on small farms-or in some cases to relocate farm families from poor soil tracts to more productive lands-where they could establish a decent standard of living and a measure of self-sufficiency by raising what they needed. Here again, applicants for this type of relief often relayed their personal circumstances and hardships in colorful detail. A youthful Clyde Raymond Carhart of Norfolk, Virginia, told President Roosevelt in no uncertain terms of his desire to better himself as a farmer:

When you read this you will probably think that I am the biggest fool in the world, but you are the only one I know could help me. . . . I have always wanted to be a farmer-not to get rich but to make a living for my mother, two brothers and my sister-to give them an education, something that I always wanted and never got. I want to feed them on more than oatmeal and bread and get a start in this world. Everyone has to have a start. You did, Lincoln did and I want a chance.12

Figuring to purchase a 44-acre farm for $2,600 plus expenses (including mules, implements, seed, and a truck) with $250 down, $90 per year in mortgage payments, and $26 per year for taxes, Carhart hoped Roosevelt (through FERA) would loan him $600 to get started. 13

In the agency's attempt to deal with one of the most visible social aspects of the Great Depression-hoboes or transients (especially veterans of the late World War)-FERA collected general information that was filed in the "Transient" categories of both the "Old" and "New" subject series.

Concerned about the particular penchant of hoboes to use the railroads as a means of free transportation, FERA sought to study the issue to curb the practice. State FERA representatives frequently requested information and assistance from railroad police or special service departments within the railway industry. In the process, FERA gathered a wealth of statistical data regarding the hobo phenomenon. One transient census report compiled by Elizabeth Wickenden, assistant director of transient activities, included local, state, and federal statistics for August 15, 1934. The report estimated the total transient population at 226,741, including 135,761 "unattached" or single males, 4,395 "unattached" females, and 86,585 individuals in families. 14
Correspondence Provides Personal Details about Individuals
In addition to descriptions of general hardships wrought by the Depression, the FERA central files occasionally offer specific details about individuals, including basic vital statistics and personal relationships. Many letters filed under "Applications for Employment" in both the "Old" and "New" subject series include personal information about the applicants, with a few accompanied by attached résumés.

When Abraham Abramowitz wrote to FERA's personnel director for a job on May 7, 1935, he also sent a summary of his personal and educational background. A 20-year-old recent (1935) graduate of Brooklyn College with a degree in English, Abramowitz claimed basic clerical skills (ability to type) and office experience, as well as one year of advanced mathematics and both a theoretical and practical knowledge of statistics. Work experience at Brooklyn College included cataloging books and orchestral scores for the Music Department. 15

Some personal details emerge under more unusual circumstances. Letters filed under "Repatriation of Aliens" in the "Old" subject series deal with FERA efforts to assist destitute aliens who wished to return voluntarily to their countries of origin or to fund transportation for the American spouses and children of aliens being deported.

Such dependents often became destitute public charges entitled to relief money, which is why FERA generally cooperated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to underwrite travel costs for family members who wished to accompany deported aliens. In the process, family relationships often came to light. During the deportation investigation of German national Ferdinand Andreas Christian Lohring in February 1934, the INS divulged to FERA that Lohring had married Anna Prill, another German native, on September 4, 1931, in Brooklyn, New York. The Lohrings had one American-born daughter, Eleanor, born in Brooklyn on November 29, 1931. 16

General correspondence relating to transients often contain personal details as well, particularly in letters from family members attempting to locate missing persons. On January 5, 1935, Mrs. S. A. Dailey of Ardmore, Oklahoma, wrote directly to Harry Hopkins to request a list of registrants at local transient bureaus across the United States, "as I would like to find out if my husband is at any of them as he is missing and I don't know if he is dead or alive and am sure worried over it." According to Mrs. Dailey, her husband disappeared in Hugo, Oklahoma, on November 23, 1934. He was a sign painter by occupation, 57 years old, Irish-born, and well educated. She further described several physical characteristics, including a "right arm off just below [the] elbow, a 'v' scar just above right eye, [he] weighs 170 lbs. is six feet tall is graying quite a bit." 17

Other transient correspondence contains specific information about World War I veterans. To help address the transient problem, FERA cooperated with the Veterans Administration (VA) to assist unemployed, homeless veterans. The VA provided shelter, subsistence, and transportation for destitute veterans and referred men to FERA for the Works Program or the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The resulting paperwork generated a variety of personal information about veterans on several forms, including official VA work applications for public relief projects, certificates of eligibility for approved applicants, and general lists of veterans who filed VA applications. (After the WPA took over from FERA in 1935, approved work applications were forwarded to the state headquarters in the WPA district closest to the veteran's hometown.)

Most VA work applications contain a range of basic statistics, including the veteran's name, race, permanent address, citizenship and marital status, age, trade or occupation, date unemployment began, and number of dependents. Military information consists of the veteran's dates of enlistment and discharge and his rank held during service.

The 1936 application for Samuel McKeand, for example, identifies him as a single, 43-year-old male from North Birmingham, Alabama, who worked as a boilermaker in civilian life. He joined the U.S. Navy on June 1, 1917, serving also as a boilermaker until his discharge on July 11, 1919. McKeand had been unemployed since 1930.

Certificates of eligibility contain briefer personal summaries-listing just the applicant's name, address, and relief district-but include more information about family and dependents. The certificate for Patrick F. Brannan's application reveals he was from Santa Rosa, California, and had a wife, Ruth (age 31), as well as a daughter, Patricia (age 10), and a son, Edgar (age 8). 18

The general lists of veterans who filed VA applications provide the least amount of personal data but offer a better summary of the nature of relief work offered by FERA. Most lists include the names of the veterans, the type of jobs or positions offered, whether the veterans accepted the work assignments, and dates of employment. One list of Philadelphia applicants, for example, shows that veterans William Brennan, Jr., Charles Conrad, Raymond McCormick, Edward Connors, Duncan Ferguson, and George R. Jackson all accepted work between May 18 and May 27, 1936, in a variety of occupations, including painter, laborer, architect draftsman, clerk, transcriber, and investigator, respectively. 19 The general lists usually do not include the original VA applications (these were forwarded to the local WPA projects coordinator in Philadelphia).

The sustained period of economic stagnation that resulted from the Great Depression-highlighted by chronic unemployment, food lines, and scarce creature comforts-caused economic hardships on a scale never seen before in American history. When individuals turned directly to the federal government for help, many details of their personal stories were captured in the official correspondence of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the first of President Roosevelt's New Deal relief agencies.

Letters written by ordinary citizens from all segments of American society described the trials of foreclosure, basic sustenance, and efforts to scratch out some kind of decent living. In the process, some correspondence also divulged details about individuals and family relationships. Such information and experiences, which are often difficult to discern from other, more conventional sources, form an integral part of the fabric of family history.

John P. Deeben is a genealogy archives specialist in the Research Support Branch at the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from Gettysburg College and Pennsylvania State University, respectively.
Notes
1 Mrs. Mae E. Sanford to Eleanor Roosevelt, Nov. 19, 1934; Appeals and Applications for Employment, "Old General Subject" Series, March 1933-January 1935 (Entry 8); Federal Emergency Relief Administration Central Files, 1933-1966 (FERA Central Files); Records of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), Record Group 69 (RG 69); National Archives at College Park, Maryland (NACP).

2 Frances T. Bourne, Preliminary Checklist of the Central Correspondence Files of the Work Projects Administration and Its Predecessors, 1933-1944, Preliminary Checklist 37 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1946), pp. iii, 48-51.

4 Ibid; see also the online article "Civil Works Administration during the Great Depression" by Colt Justice, [http://www.helium.com/items/580881-the-civil-works-administration-during-the-great-depression] accessed on November 28, 2011. [The cited article is no longer at this location. Prologue could not find a new location as of October 18, 2017.]

5 Bourne, Preliminary Checklist 37, p. iii.

6 Ibid, pp. iii-iv.

7 Ibid, pp. iii-iv, 3-7.

8 Ibid, pp. 11-12.

9 S. M. Loey, Iowa Falls, Iowa to Bruce McClure, FERA, Apr. 21, 1934; Appeals and Applications for Employment, "Old General Subject" Series; FERA Central Files; RG 69; NACP.

10 Simon Bucharoff, Los Angeles, to Harry L. Hopkins, Dec. 19, 1934, in ibid.

11 E. L. Harrison, Portsmouth, Ohio, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Nov. 23, 1934, in ibid.

12 Clyde Raymond Carhart, Norfolk, Virginia, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Feb. 19, 1934, in ibid.

14 Elizabeth Wickenden, Assistant Director of Transient Activities, to Harry L. Hopkins, Sept. 17, 1934; Transients; "Old General Subject" Series; FERA Central Files; RG 69; NACP.

15 Abraham Abramowitz to FERA Personnel Director, May 7, 1935; "New General Subject" Series, February 1935-1936 [Entry 9]; FERA Central Files; RG 69; NACP.

16 Byron H. Uhl, District Director of INS, to Frederick I. Daniels, Executive Director, Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, Feb. 13, 1934; Repatriation of Aliens; "Old General Subject" Series; FERA Central Files; RG 69; NACP.

17 Mrs. S. A. Dailey, Ardmore, Oklahoma, to Harry L. Hopkins, Jan. 5, 1935; Transients; "Old General Subject" Series; FERA Central Files; RG 69; NACP.

18 VA application for Samuel McKeand, Feb. 24, 1936, and certificate of eligibility for Patrick F. Brannan, undated; Transient Program (Veterans' Applications for Employment on Work Projects); "New General Subject" Series; FERA Central Files; RG 69; NACP.

19 List of Philadelphia VA applicants to FERA relief work, May 18-27, 1936, in ibid.

Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.

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The Correspondence Files of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 1933-1936 Fall 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2 | Genealogy Notes By John P. Deeben Enlarge Construction of a masonry wall in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Many of the jobs created in 1933ndash;1934 were construction jobs for unskilled workers.

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This allowed single men between the ages of 18 and 25 to enlist in work programs to improve America's public lands, forests, and parks.

Significance: This provided jobs for young, unemployed men during the Great Depression.

Relief: Cause it gave the unemployed people from the Great Depression jobs.

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When Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president in 1933, he took the helm of a United States brought to its knees by the Great Depression. With unemployment as high as 25 percent, millions were out of work and an entire generation of young people had lost hope in their futures, many living in makeshift shanty towns and riding the rails as hobos and drifters.

In his inaugural address, FDR latched on to an idea that was already being tested in states like California and Pennsylvania -to employ young people as an environmental army of tree planters, forest firefighters and soil conservationists.

"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work," said FDR. "This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources."

On March 31, 1933, FDR signed the Federal Unemployment Relief Act, which recruited healthy unmarried young men to join what would become known as the Civilian Conservation Corps or CCC. The men, mostly uneducated and untrained, were paid $30 a month, $25 of which was sent directly to their families. They lived in racially segregated camps that operated under military-style rules, but they had money in their pockets and food in their bellies.

At its peak in 1935, the CCC enrolled 500,000 men at 2,600 camps across the country. The popular New Deal program was phased out by 1942 as the same young enrollees enlisted for World War II.

Over its nine-year run, the CCC accomplished its dual goals of rescuing a lost generation and restoring the nation's squandered natural wealth. The following are just some of the CCC's accomplishments.

The CCC Planted 3.5 Billion Trees

When FDR was just 19 years old, he was put in charge of the Roosevelt family's aging estate in Hyde Park, New York. Faced with a serious erosion problem, young FDR decided to plant thousands of trees. Later, as governor of New York, FDR spearheaded statewide reforestation efforts and purchases of neglected farms to turn back into productive timberland.

So it shouldn't be surprising that reforestation was a major undertaking of Roosevelt's CCC. The United States used to be rich with virgin forests, but unbridled logging had reduced the nation's 800 million acres of timberland to just 100 million acres by 1933. Planting trees would not only restore a vital economic resource, but it could combat the rampant soil erosion that contributed to environmental disasters like the Dust Bowl.

Planting trees was so closely associated with the CCC that it was nicknamed "Roosevelt's Tree Army." By one estimate, the hardworking enrollees of the CCC planted 3.5 billion trees from 1933 to 1942, which is more than half of the total amount of trees planted in America as part of reforestation efforts.

Not only did the CCC plant billions of new saplings, but it also restored and rehabilitated overcrowded forest stands by thinning dead trees. Other CCC enrollees were charged with tending experimental forest plots that led to innovations in healthy forest management.

The CCC Created 711 State Parks

The Department of Interior put CCC recruits to work expanding the country's nascent national and state park systems. While a number of major national parks existed in 1933- Yellowstone and Yosemite date back to the 19th century-there were still several states without a single state park, including Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi and New Mexico.

Over the nine-year run of the CCC, a total of 2 million CCC workers labored to create new national and state parks and make existing ones more accessible by paving roads, cutting trails, and building cabins and campsites. In total, there were 194 CCC work camps in 94 national parks and 697 camps in 881 state and local parks across the US.

Two well-known national parks were built almost entirely by CCC labor: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddling the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, and the 600-acre Big Bend National Park in Texas. In addition, the CCC helped to create a total of 711 new state parks across the country.

The CCC Spent 6.5 Million Days Fighting Fires

During the nine years that the CCC was operational, the annual acreage of U.S. forest lost to fire sunk to its lowest point ever, despite the fact that a record number of forest fires were reported. That's because tens of thousands of young CCC enrollees were employed as either full-time or emergency firefighters.

Teams of permanent CCC firefighters patrolled vast stretches of forest on foot, by truck, by airplane and even canoe. When a blaze broke out, nearby CCC camps were enlisted to attack the fire with everything they had-handheld axes and hoes, shovels and saws, and the occasional bulldozer.

In one memorable campaign, the stalwart CCC firefighters took on the mysterious subterranean coal fires near Gillette, Wyoming. The fires, which could send flames 20 feet in the air from exposed coal seams, had been burning for as long as residents could remember. The CCC workers smothered some of the fires with sand and dug burning material out of others, successfully bringing 17 separate blazes under control by 1937.

The total number of hours logged by CCC firefighters from 1933 to 1942 was the equivalent of 6.5 million days. Tragically, 47 CCC firefighters also lost their lives in the effort.

The CCC Built More than 3,000 Fire Lookout Towers

Fire prevention was just as important as fire fighting. Droves of CCC men were assigned to improve emergency access to forest lands by cutting tens of thousands of miles of truck roads, breaking new trails, and stringing countless miles of telephone lines to facilitate communication between fire-fighting units.

Lookout towers were critical to spotting small fires before they grew into forest-gutting blazes. CCC workers constructed more than 3,000 of these towers, including the stone masonry Mount Diablo Lookout Tower outside of San Francisco commanding impressive views of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges.

CCC crews also thinned dead logs and timber from fire-prone areas and cut preventative fire breaks to slow the progress of a potentially disastrous blaze. One of the largest of these fire breaks was the Ponderosa Way in Northern California, a 600-mile scar separating the dry brushland from the timber-rich forests above.

The CCC also oversaw the construction of large water storage basins and collection ponds to have a ready water supply to battle future wildfires.

The CCC Built More than 30,000 Miles of Terraces

The Soil Conservation Service was second only to the Forest Service for the largest number of CCC camps under its direction. After decades of improper land use-clearing trees to create more farmland, failing to plant cover crops in fallow fields-and years of drought conditions, erosion was threatening much of America's farmland. By 1938, there were more than 500 active CCC soil conservation projects in 44 states employing 60,000 young men a year.

The CCC workers planted trees to serve as windbreaks and soil anchors. They healed gullies and redirected water back toward crops. And they trained farmers in modern soil conservation techniques that would lead to healthier land and bigger yields.

One of the most innovative and effective tools of the CCC was the terracing of hilly land to create level fields with less water runoff. Terracing was no small undertaking, requiring engineers, surveyors and heavy machinery. Over the life of the CCC, more than 30,000 miles of terraces were built and thousands of young CCC workers gained technical skills that served them well in future careers.

The CCC Launched the American Ski Industry

Downhill skiing was not a thing in America in the 1920s. There simply weren't any dedicated ski trails, let alone conveniences like rope tows or ski lifts. But thanks to the CCC and a forward-thinking forestry official in Vermont, America got its first ski runs in the 1930s.

Perry Merrill, the state forester of Vermont, had attended forestry school in Sweden, where he witnessed the Scandinavian passion for downhill skiing. Merrill dreamed of bringing the sport to the craggy hills of his home state but lacked the resources to cut and clear miles of trails. Until, that is, he was put in charge of a CCC team of 25 hardy men in 1933.

Over the next few years, the tireless CCC workers cut legendary New England trails with names like Stowe, Wildcat, Cannon and Thunderbolt. Out West, CCC workers also cut the first ski runs in Sun Valley, Idaho. The first rope tows were installed in the late 30s and Americans fell in love with skiing, thanks in no small part to the CCC.

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6 Projects the Civilian Conservation Corps Accomplished | HISTORY

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On the heels of the Great Depression, the federal government under FDR hired young people to work as an army of tree planters, firefighters and even ski trail blazers.

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This manages the fifth-largest river system to control the flooding.

Significance: This makes it easier for people to travel on rivers and protects water quality.

Reform: This is reforming the river conditions to help the people more.

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Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), U.S. government agency established in 1933 to control floods, improve navigation, improve the living standards of farmers, and produce electrical power along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The Tennessee River was subject to severe periodic flooding, and navigation along the river's middle course was interrupted by a series of shoals at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1933 the U.S. Congress passed a bill establishing the TVA, thus consolidating all the activities of the various government agencies in the area and placing them under the control of a single one. A massive program of building dams, hydroelectric generating stations, and flood-control projects ensued. The fusion of a broad range of specific powers with a sense of social responsibility to the region made the TVA significant as a prototype of natural-resource planning. Its jurisdiction is generally limited to the drainage basin of the Tennessee River, which covers parts of seven states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The TVA is a public corporation governed by a board of three directors appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. The constitutionality of the TVA was immediately challenged upon the agency's establishment, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case of Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936) and in later decisions.

Norris Dam Courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority

All dams in the system are managed as a unit, with primary emphasis on flood control, which has proved extremely effective; no major flood damage has occurred on the Tennessee River since the system of dams was completed. The TVA has built navigation locks into each of its nine main dams, deepened and otherwise improved the channel, and encouraged the development of port facilities along the river. As a result, traffic on the river increased from 33,000,000 ton-miles in 1933 to several billion ton-miles by the late 20th century. The cheap electricity provided by the new dams spurred the industrial development of what had been a chronically depressed regional economy. The waters impounded by the dams created the "Great Lakes of the South," which the TVA helped develop into a prime boating, fishing, and recreational area. The TVA carried out a vigorous mosquito eradication program on its reservoirs, thus eliminating the endemic malaria that had previously been traceable to the river. The agency also improved forestry and land conservation practices in the region.

The most controversial activity of the TVA is the production and sale of electric power, which has been resisted by privately owned power companies. The TVA contracts with municipalities and cooperatives to supply wholesale power for distribution and has joined with them in purchasing the facilities of privately owned electric-utility companies in the region. These purchases have established an integrated power service area in which the TVA is the sole supplier of power. The TVA power system, which includes more than 50 dams, as well as coal-fired thermal plants and operable nuclear plants, possesses a huge generating capacity. Power is sold in bulk, about half to federal agencies and half to large industries and locally owned municipal and cooperative distribution systems; and electric rates in the Tennessee River valley are among the lowest in the nation. Because of critics' claims that the low rates are made possible by the TVA's tax exemption and lack of obligation to show a profit on its operations, a schedule of payments was worked out by which the TVA would refund to the national treasury over a period of years all federal electric-power investment in the valley. The TVA nuclear power plant program was seriously curtailed in the 1980s because of quality control problems and safety deficiencies in several plants already completed or under construction.

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Tennessee Valley Authority | History & Facts

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Tennessee Valley Authority, U.S. government agency established in 1933 to control floods, improve navigation, improve the living standards of farmers, and produce electrical power along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Its jurisdiction is generally limited to the drainage basin of the Tennessee River.

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This refinanced one of every five mortgages on urban privates residences.

Significance: Monitors the progress of the therapy of a disease.

Recovery: This helps the economy go back to normal and help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages.

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Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights

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One of the lesser-known programs of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was established in 1933 to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages. In cities and towns nationwide, the HOLC used government bonds to buy out mortgages from banks and then worked with borrowers to refinance them at lower interest rates over longer loan periods. By 1935, the HOLC had made over one million such loans, providing vital aid to many trying to stay in their homes during the most turbulent years of economic downturn. In the late 1930s, the HOLC expanded their efforts to stabilize the mortgage market by producing a series of Residential Security Maps of major urban areas, including Los Angeles, to help banks and other mortgage-issuing companies determine how residential properties in those areas should be valued. HOLC investigators surveyed neighborhoods and appraised them based on a color-coded ranking system and passed that information on to lenders. But in making their appraisals, the HOLC combined assessments of the neighborhood's buildings with assessments of the neighborhood's residents, its rankings privileging racial homogeneity and penalizing "undesirable" racial and ethnic minorities. For example, the highest "A" (green) ranking was given to neighborhoods that were:

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...the new well planned sections of the city, and almost synonymous with the areas where good mortgage lenders with available funds are willing to make their maximum loans to be amortized over a 10-15-year period-perhaps up to 75-80% of the appraisal. They are homogeneous; in demand as residential locations in "good time" or "bad"; hence on the upgrade.

While the lowest "D" (red) ranking was given to neighborhoods that were:

characterized by detrimental influences in a pronounced degree, undesirable population or infiltration of it. Low percentage of home ownership, very poor maintenance and often vandalism prevail. Unstable incomes of the people and difficult collections are usually prevalent. The areas are broader than the so-called slum districts. Some mortgage lenders may refuse to make loans in these neighborhoods and others will lend only on a conservative basis.

While the ranking system did not explicitly define what constituted an "undesirable population," many of the completed forms did. In their survey of Boyle Heights, for example, the HOLC inspectors noted the area was home to "Russian, Polish & Armenian Jews, Slavs, Greeks, American Mexicans, Japanese and Italians" and then described it as being "literally honeycombed with diverse and subversive racial elements. It is seriously doubted whether there is a single block in the area which does not contain detrimental racial elements." The HOLC accordingly gave Boyle Heights its lowest, "red" ranking. That "red" ranking came with serious consequences: it signaled "riskiness," making it much more difficult for those interested in purchasing a home in the neighborhood to obtain financing from mortgage-lenders and, in turn, effectively reducing the value of the homes of existing property owners. Neighborhoods ranked "red" also became targets for a variety of slum clearance and urban renewal programs, as housing and development agencies at the local, state, and national level appropriate land in "red" areas to dedicate it to more "public" purposes. Boyle Heights provides a clear example of these impacts: between 1943 and 1960, five freeways were constructed in and around the neighborhood, the first of which, the Interstate 10, cut directly through Brooklyn Avenue, cleaving the neighborhood in two. The East Los Angeles Interchange, a snarling mess of concrete and steel that connected these new freeways, was also built next to the neighborhood, creating year-round sound and air pollution. In 1942, construction was completed on Aliso Village, one of the nation's first integrated public housing projects, followed by Pico Gardens, Estrada Courts, and Ramona Gardens in City Terrace by 1950. In total, 10 percent of all the land in Boyle Heights was used to meet the needs for transportation and housing in the region, the construction resulting in the removal of almost 3,000 dwellings in the area and the displacement of some 10,000 residents. And as a result of these projects, the neighborhood's remaining homeowners saw the values of their properties continue to decline.

The redlining of Boyle Heights thereby encouraged area residents-particularly those more affluent young adults seeking to purchase their first homes-to leave the neighborhood. Unlike other minority groups, most Jewish Americans were able to benefit from the labor protections of the New Deal, the expansion of access to affordable public higher education, and the benefits of the GI Bill. Jewish Angelenos were, accordingly, more upwardly mobile than ever before in the years that the freeways were erected. Those who could afford to purchased homes in other areas, many moving to the Fairfax district and other neighborhoods west of downtown and others settling in the new suburban communities of the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys. Parents, family members, and friends often joined them, and by 1955, Boyle Heights' Jewish population had declined by 72 percent. Mexican American, Asian American, and African American residents faced persistent employment discrimination that limited their economic mobility and they found it far more difficult to transgress the restrictive racial covenants that prevailed in most other neighborhoods in the city as well as the suburbs, limiting their ability to relocate as the freeways went up in Boyle Heights.

These exclusions did not go uncontested. In Fullerton, south of Boyle Heights, Mexican-Americans mounted a legal challenge to the racially-restrictive covenants that prevailed in most of Southern California in the Doss v. Bernal case, one of the first legal victories against housing discrimination based on race. Argued by David C. Marcus, the Iowa-born son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Doss v. Bernal established Mexican Americans' rights to equal protection under the 14th amendment. The case represented what historian Genevieve Carpio described as an instance of "Jewish-Latino alliance" in the postwar era, revealing "how, together they [Jews and Latinos] attempted to shift the legal terrain of race and race-relations in the United States." In West Adams, a group of African American entertainers, including Oscar-award winner Hattie McDaniel, mounted a similar challenge after a group of their white neighbors sued to have them evicted in 1945, their attorney Loren Miller successfully arguing that restrictive covenants violated both the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as the California State Constitution. Both cases established important legal precedents against housing discrimination on a national scale, informing the Supreme Court's 1948 ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer that such racially-restrictive covenants were unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable. They also served to consecrate new coalitions and organizations that would mount similar challenges to school segregation in the years that followed, including the Boyle Heights-based Community Service Organization.

These landmark rulings democratized housing policies in Southern California and nationally, but their implementation was gradual, uneven, and piecemeal; in many parts of Los Angeles, and across the country, segregation and housing discrimination endured well into the 1960s and continues to the present day. The HOLC's redlining of Boyle Heights thereby encouraged a rapid demographic shift known as "white flight," wherein white residents left en masse and settled in more affluent areas, leaving behind a mostly non-white, minority population. The departures lowered the tax revenue in the area, depriving local schools and social service agencies of vital resources and fueling further population shifts. By the 1960s, Boyle Heights-once home to residents of a variety of ethnicities and incomes levels-was home to a predominantly low-income Mexican American population that was physically separated from the rest of the city by the freeways, denying them ready access to transportation and jobs; was underserved and neglected by public service agencies; and faced increasingly aggressive and brutal policing practices. These historical realities in Boyle Heights and redlined neighborhoods like it throughout the country prompted Richard Rothstein to describe the HOLC as "a state-sponsored system of racial segregation." Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights

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Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights: The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Redlining of Boyle Heights

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One of the lesser-known programs of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was established in 1933 to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages. In cities and towns nationwide, ...

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Separated commercial banks from investment banking and this creates the Federal Deposit Insurance.

Significance: Is passed to measure counter the failure of banks during the Great Depression.

Reform: Led to the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

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The emergency legislation that was passed within days of President Franklin Roosevelt taking office in March 1933 was just the start of the process to restore confidence in the banking system. Congress saw the need for substantial reform of the banking system, which eventually came in the Banking Act of 1933, or the Glass-Steagall Act. The bill was designed "to provide for the safer and more effective use of the assets of banks, to regulate interbank control, to prevent the undue diversion of funds into speculative operations, and for other purposes." The measure was sponsored by Sen. Carter Glass (D-VA) and Rep. Henry Steagall (D-AL). Glass, a former Treasury secretary, was the primary force behind the act. Steagall, then chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, agreed to support the act with Glass after an amendment was added to permit bank deposit insurance. On June 16, 1933, President Roosevelt signed the bill into law. Glass originally introduced his banking reform bill in January 1932. It received extensive critiques and comments from bankers, economists, and the Federal Reserve Board. It passed the Senate in February 1932, but the House adjourned before coming to a decision. It was one of the most widely discussed and debated legislative initiatives in 1932.

Some background: In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression, Congress was concerned that commercial banking operations and the payments system were incurring losses from volatile equity markets. An important motivation for the act was the desire to restrict the use of bank credit for speculation and to direct bank credit into what Glass and others thought to be more productive uses, such as industry, commerce, and agriculture.

In response to these concerns, the main provisions of the Banking Act of 1933 effectively separated commercial banking from investment banking. Senator Glass was the driving force behind this provision. Basically, commercial banks, which took in deposits and made loans, were no longer allowed to underwrite or deal in securities, while investment banks, which underwrote and dealt in securities, were no longer allowed to have close connections to commercial banks, such as overlapping directorships or common ownership. Following the passage of the act, institutions were given a year to decide whether they would specialize in commercial or investment banking. Only 10 percent of commercial banks' total income could stem from securities; however, an exception allowed commercial banks to underwrite government-issued bonds. The separation of commercial and investment banking was not controversial in 1933. There was a broad belief that separation would lead to a healthier financial system. It became more controversial over the years and in 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the provisions of the Banking Act of 1933 that restricted affiliations between banks and securities firms.

The act also gave tighter regulation of national banks to the Federal Reserve System, requiring holding companies and other affiliates of state member banks to make three reports annually to their Federal Reserve Bank and to the Federal Reserve Board. Furthermore, bank holding companies that owned a majority of shares of any Federal Reserve member bank had to register with the Fed and obtain its permit to vote their shares in the selection of directors of any such member-bank subsidiary.

Another important provision of the act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures bank deposits with a pool of money collected from banks. This provision was the most controversial at the time and drew veto threats from President Roosevelt. It was included at the insistence of Steagall, who had the interests of small rural banks in mind. Small rural banks and their representatives were the main proponents of deposit insurance. Opposition came from large banks that believed they would end up subsidizing small banks. Past attempts by states to instate deposit insurance had been unsuccessful because of moral hazard and also because local banks were not diversified. After the bank holiday, the public showed vast support for insurance, partly in the hope of recovering some of the losses and partly because many blamed Wall Street and big bankers for the Depression. Although Glass had opposed deposit insurance for years, he changed his mind and urged Roosevelt to accept it. A temporary fund became effective in January 1934, insuring deposits up to $2,500. The fund became permanent in July 1934 and the limit was raised to $5,000. This limit was raised numerous times over the years until reaching the current $250,000. All Federal Reserve member banks on or before July 1, 1934, were required to become stockholders of the FDIC by such date. No state bank was eligible for membership in the Federal Reserve System until it became a stockholder of the FDIC, and thereby became an insured institution, with required membership by national banks and voluntary membership by state banks. Deposit insurance is still viewed as a great success, although the problem of moral hazard and adverse selection came up again during banking failures of the 1980s. In response, Congress passed legislation that strengthened capital requirements and required banks with less capital to close.

The act had a large impact on the Federal Reserve. Notable provisions included the creation of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) under Section 8. However, the 1933 FOMC did not include voting rights for the Federal Reserve Board, which was revised by the Banking Act of 1935 and amended again in 1942 to closely resemble the modern FOMC.

Prior to the passage of the act, there were no restrictions on the right of a bank officer of a member bank to borrow from that bank. Excessive loans to bank officers and directors became a concern to bank regulators. In response, the act prohibited Federal Reserve member bank loans to their executive officers and required the repayment of outstanding loans.

In addition, the act introduced what later became known as Regulation Q, which mandated that interest could not be paid on checking accounts and gave the Federal Reserve authority to establish ceilings on the interest that could be paid on other kinds of deposits. The view was that payment of interest on deposits led to "excessive" competition among banks, causing them to engage in unduly risky investment and lending policies so that they could earn enough income to pay the interest. The prohibition of interest-bearing demand accounts has been effectively repealed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Beginning July 21, 2011, financial institutions became allowed, but not required, to offer interest-bearing demand accounts.

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The Glass-Steagall Act effectively separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, among other things. It was one of the most widely debated legislative initiatives before being signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1933.

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This is used to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system.

Significance: Makes supervising financial institutions for safety soundness and consumer protection.

Reforms: This restores the banks and encourages savings.

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Consumers

The FDIC provides tools, education, and news updates to help consumers make informed decisions and protect their assets.

Consumer Resources

View more See previous consumers resources content See additional consumers resources content

Bankers

The FDIC provides extensive resources for bankers, including guidance on regulations, information on examinations, legislation insights, and training programs.

Banker Resources

View more See previous banker resources content See additional banker resources content

Analysts

The FDIC is proud to be a pre-eminent source of U.S. banking industry research for analysts, including quarterly banking profiles, working papers, and state banking performance data.

Analyst Resources

View more See previous analyst resources content See additional analyst resources content

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FDIC: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

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The FDIC is an independent agency created by the U.S. Congress to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system.

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A labor law and consumer law passed by the Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages.

Significance: This reduces unemployment's, establishes minimum wages and maximum hours.

Recovery: This recovers people in order to get jobs and increase the economic recovery.

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Part of the Science & Business Reading Room at the Library of Congress, the Business Section is the starting point for conducting research at the Library of Congress in the subject areas of business and economics. Here, reference specialists in specific subject areas of business assist patrons in formulating search strategies and gaining access to the information and materials contained in the Library's rich collections of business and economics materials.

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Research Guides: National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the New Deal: A Resource Guide: Introduction

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Beginning in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a series of "New Deal" programs with the goal of getting the U.S. out of the Depression. This guide provides print and electronic resources for researching the NRA and other related recovery efforts.

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Decreases unemployment and stimulates the economy to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

Significance: Helps the economy recover

Recover: This helps the unemployed people gain jobs and helps the economy

increase.

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This is created to authorize to govern the secondary market trading of the company.

Significance: Promotes fair dealing and prevents fraud.

Reform: This is helping to regulate the stock market.

https://www.toppanmerrill.com/glossary/securities-exchange-act-of-1934/#:~:text=The%20Securities%20Exchange%20Act%20of%201934%20created%20the%20U.S.%20Securities,typically%20through%20brokers%20or%20dealers.

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Securities and Exchange Commission: CNBC Explains

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The United States Securities and Exchange Commission—or SEC—is the watchdog of Wall Street. So how does it work and what power does it really have? CNBC explains.

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This established the National Labor Relations Board and talked about the relations between the unions and employers in private sectors.

Significance: Gave employees the right to form and join unions.

Reform: This gave unemployed people to get jobs and create unions.

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1935 passage of the Wagner Act | National Labor Relations Board

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In the fall of 1934, Senator Wagner began revising his labor disputes bill, determined to build on the experience of the two earlier NIRA boards and to find a solution to the enforcement problem that had plagued them. In February 1935, Wagner introduced the National Labor Relations Act in the Senate…

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This helped pay for jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression.

Significance: This built up the public infrastructure of the US.

Reform: Gave employed people a chance to gain jobs and money.

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Works Progress Administration: WPA & New Deal - HISTORY

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The Works Progress Administration or WPA was a New Deal employment and infrastructure program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

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Provides retirement income to American workers.

Significance: Helps older Americans, and workers who become disabled, and wounded warriors.

Relief: This relieved the people so they knew they had coverage after something happened to them.

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You can count on us to be there

Social Security has two trust funds - Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI). Historically, the OASI and DI Trust Funds have reached times where dedicated tax revenue fell short of the cost of providing benefits and also times where the trust funds have reached the brink of exhaustion of assets. However, Congress approved the Social Security Amendments of 1977 and 1983, which made substantial modifications that reversed the cash flow of the program to positive levels and caused the substantial buildup of assets that exists today.

Social Security has always changed to meet the needs of the people we serve and will continue to help support you and your family. Whether you are about to retire, become a full-time grandparent, or start a new chapter, Social Security can help you secure today and tomorrow.

To learn more about Social Security and our programs and services, go to ssa.gov, call 1-800-772-1213, or visit your local Social Security office.

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This looks over the minimum wages, equal pay for equal work regarding the sex, and overtime pay.

Significance: Helped people get overtime pay and equal pay.

Reform: Helped people who are employed get equal pay and more hours.

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New: Interactive Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act (PDF)
(For best printout, see the PDF version ( Spanish).)
Revised November 2023

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments.

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) administers and enforces the FLSA with respect to private employment, State and local government employment, and Federal employees of the Library of Congress, U.S. Postal Service, Postal Rate Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The FLSA is enforced by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for employees of other Executive Branch agencies, and by the U.S. Congress for covered employees of the Legislative Branch.

Special rules apply to State and local government employment involving fire protection and law enforcement activities, volunteer services, and compensatory time off instead of cash overtime pay.

Basic Wage Standards

Covered, nonexempt workers are entitled to a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Special provisions apply to workers in American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Nonexempt workers must be paid overtime pay at a rate of not less than one and one-half times their regular rates of pay after 40 hours of work in a workweek.

Wages required by the FLSA are due on the regular payday for the pay period covered. Deductions made from wages for such items as cash or merchandise shortages, employer-required uniforms, and tools of the trade, are not legal to the extent that they reduce the wages of employees below the minimum rate required by the FLSA or reduce the amount of overtime pay due under the FLSA.

The FLSA contains some exemptions from these basic standards. Some apply to specific types of businesses; others apply to specific kinds of work.

While the FLSA does set basic minimum wage and overtime pay standards and regulates the employment of minors, there are a number of employment practices which the FLSA does not regulate.

For example, the FLSA does not require:

1. vacation, holiday, severance, or sick pay;

2. meal or rest periods, holidays off, or vacations;

3. premium pay for weekend or holiday work;

4. pay raises or fringe benefits; or

5. a discharge notice, reason for discharge, or immediate payment of final wages to terminated employees.

The FLSA does not provide wage payment or collection procedures for an employee's usual or promised wages or commissions in excess of those required by the FLSA. However, some States do have laws under which such claims (sometimes including fringe benefits) may be filed.

Also, the FLSA does not limit the number of hours in a day or days in a week an employee may be required or scheduled to work, including overtime hours, if the employee is at least 16 years old.

The above matters are for agreement between the employer and the employees or their authorized representatives.

All employees of certain enterprises having workers engaged in interstate commerce, producing goods for interstate commerce, or handling, selling, or otherwise working on goods or materials that have been moved in or produced for such commerce by any person, are covered by the FLSA.

A covered enterprise is the related activities performed through unified operation or common control by any person or persons for a common business purpose and -

1. whose annual gross volume of sales made or business done is not less than $500,000 (exclusive of excise taxes at the retail level that are separately stated); or

2. is engaged in the operation of a hospital, an institution primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, or the mentally ill who reside on the premises; a school for mentally or physically disabled or gifted children; a preschool, an elementary or secondary school, or an institution of higher education (whether operated for profit or not for profit); or

3. is an activity of a public agency.

Any enterprise that was covered by the FLSA on March 31, 1990, and that ceased to be covered because of the revised $500,000 test, continues to be subject to the overtime pay, child labor and recordkeeping provisions of the FLSA.

Employees of firms which are not covered enterprises under the FLSA still may be subject to its minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor provisions if they are individually engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce, or in any closely-related process or occupation directly essential to such production. Such employees include those who: work in communications or transportation; regularly use the mails, telephones, or telegraph for interstate communication, or keep records of interstate transactions; handle, ship, or receive goods moving in interstate commerce; regularly cross State lines in the course of employment; or work for independent employers who contract to do clerical, custodial, maintenance, or other work for firms engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce.

Domestic service workers such as day workers, housekeepers, chauffeurs, cooks, or full-time babysitters are covered if:

1. their cash wages from one employer in calendar year 2010 are at least $1,700 (this calendar year threshold is adjusted by the Social Security Administration each year); or

2. they work a total of more than 8 hours a week for one or more employers.

Tipped Employees

Tipped employees are individuals engaged in occupations in which they customarily and regularly receive more than $30 a month in tips. The employer may consider tips as part of wages, but the employer must pay at least $2.13 an hour in direct wages.

The employer who elects to use the tip credit provision must inform the employee in advance and must be able to show that the employee receives at least the applicable minimum wage (see above) when direct wages and the tip credit allowance are combined. If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. Also, employees must retain all of their tips, except to the extent that they participate in a valid tip pooling or sharing arrangement.

Employer-Furnished Facilities

The reasonable cost or fair value of board, lodging, or other facilities customarily furnished by the employer for the employee's benefit may be considered part of wages.

The performance of certain types of work in an employee's home is prohibited under the law unless the employer has obtained prior certification from DOL. Restrictions apply in the manufacture of knitted outerwear, gloves and mittens, buttons and buckles, handkerchiefs, embroideries, and jewelry (where safety and health hazards are not involved). The manufacture of women's apparel (and jewelry under hazardous conditions) is generally prohibited. If you have questions on whether a certain type of work is restricted, or who is eligible for a homework certificate, or how to obtain a certificate, you may contact the local WHD office.

The FLSA provides for the employment of certain individuals at wage rates below the statutory minimum. Such individuals include student-learners (vocational education students), as well as full-time students in retail or service establishments, agriculture, or institutions of higher education. Also included are individuals whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by a physical or mental disability, including those related to age or injury, for the work to be performed. Employment at less than the minimum wage is authorized to prevent curtailment of opportunities for employment. Such employment is permitted only under certificates issued by WHD.

A minimum wage of not less than $4.25 an hour is permitted for employees under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer. Employers are prohi-bited from taking any action to displace employees in order to hire employees at the youth minimum wage. Also prohibited are partial displacements such as reducing employees' hours, wages, or employment benefits.

Exemptions

Some employees are exempt from the overtime pay provisions or both the minimum wage and overtime pay provisions.

Because exemptions are generally narrowly defined under the FLSA, an employer should carefully check the exact terms and conditions for each. Detailed information is available from local WHD offices.

Following are examples of exemptions which are illustrative, but not all-inclusive. These examples do not define the conditions for each exemption.
Exemptions from Both Minimum Wage and Overtime Pay

1. Executive, administrative, and professional employees (including teachers and academic administrative personnel in elementary and secondary schools), outside sales employees, and employees in certain computer-related occupations (as defined in DOL regulations);

2. Employees of certain seasonal amusement or recreational establishments, employees of certain small newspapers, seamen employed on foreign vessels, employees engaged in fishing operations, and employees engaged in newspaper delivery;

3. Farmworkers employed by anyone who used no more than 500 "man-days" of farm labor in any calendar quarter of the preceding calendar year;

4. Casual babysitters and persons employed as companions to the elderly or infirm.

Exemptions from Overtime Pay Only

1. Certain commissioned employees of retail or service establishments; auto, truck, trailer, farm implement, boat, or aircraft sales-workers; or parts-clerks and mechanics servicing autos, trucks, or farm implements, who are employed by non-manufacturing establishments primarily engaged in selling these items to ultimate purchasers;

2. Employees of railroads and air carriers, taxi drivers, certain employees of motor carriers, seamen on American vessels, and local delivery employees paid on approved trip rate plans;

3. Announcers, news editors, and chief engineers of certain non-metropolitan broadcasting stations;

4. Domestic service workers living in the employer's residence;

5. Employees of motion picture theaters; and

6. Farmworkers.

Partial Exemptions from Overtime Pay

1. Partial overtime pay exemptions apply to employees engaged in certain operations on agricultural commodities and to employees of certain bulk petroleum distributors.

2. Hospitals and residential care establishments may adopt, by agreement with their employees, a 14-day work period instead of the usual 7-day workweek if the employees are paid at least time and one-half their regular rates for hours worked over 8 in a day or 80 in a 14-day work period, whichever is the greater number of overtime hours.

3. Employees who lack a high school diploma, or who have not attained the educational level of the 8th grade, can be required to spend up to 10 hours in a workweek engaged in remedial reading or training in other basic skills without receiving time and one-half overtime pay for these hours. However, the employees must receive their normal wages for hours spent in such training and the training must not be job specific.

4. Public agency fire departments and police departments may establish a work period ranging from 7 to 28 days in which overtime need only be paid after a specified number of hours in each work period.

The FLSA child labor provisions are designed to protect the educational opportunities of minors and prohibit their employment in jobs and under conditions detrimental to their health or well-being. The provisions include restrictions on hours of work for minors under 16 and lists of hazardous occupations orders for both farm and non-farm jobs declared by the Secretary of Labor to be too dangerous for minors to perform. Further information on prohibited occupations is available from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/youthrules.

Regulations governing child labor in non-farm jobs differ somewhat from those pertaining to agricultural employment. In non-farm work, the permissible jobs and hours of work, by age, are as follows:

1. Youths 18 years or older may perform any job, whether hazardous or not, for unlimited hours;

2. Minors 16 and 17 years old may perform any nonhazardous job, for unlimited hours; and

3. Minors 14 and 15 years old may work outside school hours in various nonmanufacturing, nonmining, nonhazardous jobs under the following conditions: no more than 3 hours on a school day, 18 hours in a school week, 8 hours on a non-school day, or 40 hours in a non-school week. Also, work may not begin before 7 a.m., nor end after 7 p.m., except from June 1 through Labor Day, when evening hours are extended to 9 p.m. Under a special provision, youths 14 and 15 years old enrolled in an approved Work Experience and Career Exploration Program (WECEP) may be employed for up to 23 hours in school weeks and 3 hours on school days (including during school hours). In addition, academically oriented youths enrolled in an approved Work-Study Program (WSP) may be employed during school hours.

Fourteen is the minimum age for most non-farm work. However, at any age, minors may deliver newspapers; perform in radio, television, movie, or theatrical productions; work for parents in their solely-owned non-farm business (except in mining, manufacturing or on hazardous jobs); or gather evergreens and make evergreen wreaths.

In farm work, permissible jobs and hours of work, by age, are as follows:

1. Minors 16 years and older may perform any job, whether hazardous or not, for unlimited hours;

2. Minors 14 and 15 years old may perform any nonhazardous farm job outside of school hours;

3. Minors 12 and 13 years old may work outside of school hours in nonhazardous jobs, either with a parent's written consent or on the same farm as the parent(s);

4. Minors under 12 years old may perform jobs on farms owned or operated by parent(s), or with a parent's written consent, outside of school hours in nonhazardous jobs on farms not covered by minimum wage requirements.

Minors of any age may be employed by their parents in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by their parents.

The FLSA requires employers to keep records on wages, hours, and other items, as specified in DOL recordkeeping regulations. Most of the information is of the kind generally maintained by employers in ordinary business practice and in compliance with other laws and regulations. The records do not have to be kept in any particular form and time clocks need not be used. With respect to an employee subject to the minimum wage provisions or both the minimum wage and overtime pay provisions, the following records must be kept:

1. personal information, including employee's name, home address, occupation, sex, and birth date if under 19 years of age;

2. hour and day when workweek begins;

3. total hours worked each workday and each workweek;

4. total daily or weekly straight-time earnings;

5. regular hourly pay rate for any week when overtime is worked;

6. total overtime pay for the workweek;

7. deductions from or additions to wages;

8. total wages paid each pay period; and

9. date of payment and pay period covered.

Records required for exempt employees differ from those for nonexempt workers. Special information is required for homeworkers, for employees working under uncommon pay arrangements, for employees to whom lodging or other facilities are furnished, and for employees receiving remedial education.

Under the FLSA, most nursing employees have the right to reasonable break time and a private place to pump breast milk for their nursing child. This right is available each time the employee needs to pump for one year after their nursing child's birth. An employer may not deny a covered employee a needed break to pump.

Employers must provide a reasonable amount of break time to pump milk as frequently as needed by the nursing employee. The frequency and duration of breaks needed to pump will likely vary depending on factors related to the nursing employee and the child.

Employees are entitled to a place to pump, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public. The location provided must be functional as a space for pumping. If the space is not dedicated to the nursing employee's use, it must be available when needed. A space temporarily created or converted into a space for pumping at work or made available when needed by the nursing employee is sufficient provided that the space is shielded from view, and free from any intrusion from coworkers and the public. A bathroom, even if private, is not a permissible location under the Act.

Certain employees of airlines, railroads, and motorcoach carriers are exempt from the pump at work protections of the FLSA. Employees who are exempted may be entitled to break time and/or space protections under State or local laws.

Employers with fewer than 50 employees are not subject to the FLSA pump at work requirements if compliance with the provision would impose an undue hardship (although State or local laws may still apply). Whether compliance would be an undue hardship is determined by looking at the difficulty or expense of compliance for a specific employer in comparison to the size, financial resources, nature, and structure of the employer's business. All employees who work for the covered employer, regardless of work site, are counted when determining whether this exemption may apply.

Reasonable break time to pump is generally not compensable unless otherwise required by Federal, State, or local law. For instance, the FLSA requires compensation for all hours worked and break time to pump will be considered hours worked if an employee is not completely relieved from duty during the entirety of the break. When employers provide paid breaks, an employee who uses that break time to pump must be compensated for that break time. Also, in most cases, the FMLA will require that employers may not reduce exempt employees' salaries to reflect pump breaks.

Employees may have greater protections under State or local worker protection laws. The FLSA does not preempt State or local laws that provide greater protections to employees - for example, providing compensated break time or providing break time beyond one year after the child's birth.

Terms Used in FLSA

Workweek - A workweek is a period of 168 hours during 7 consecutive 24-hour periods. It may begin on any day of the week and at any hour of the day established by the employer. Generally, for purposes of minimum wage and overtime payment, each workweek stands alone; there can be no averaging of 2 or more workweeks. Employee coverage, compliance with wage payment requirements, and the application of most exemptions are determined on a workweek basis.

Hours Worked - Covered employees must be paid for all hours worked in a workweek. In general, "hours worked" includes all time an employee must be on duty, or on the employer's premises or at any other prescribed place of work, from the beginning of the first principal activity of the work day to the end of the last principal work activity of the workday. Also included is any additional time the employee is allowed (i.e., suffered or permitted) to work.

Overtime must be paid at a rate of at least one and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for each hour worked in a workweek in excess of the maximum allowable in a given type of employment. Generally, the regular rate includes all payments made by the employer to or on behalf of the employee (except for certain statutory exclusions). The following examples are based on a maximum 40-hour workweek applicable to most covered nonexempt employees.

1. Hourly rate (regular pay rate for an employee paid by the hour) - If more than 40 hours are worked, at least one and one-half times the regular rate for each hour over 40 is due.

Example: An employee paid $8.00 an hour works 44 hours in a workweek. The employee is entitled to at least one and one-half times $8.00, or $12.00, for each hour over 40. Pay for the week would be $320 for the first 40 hours, plus $48.00 for the four hours of overtime - a total of $368.00.

2. Piece rate - The regular rate of pay for an employee paid on a piecework basis is obtained by dividing the total weekly earnings by the total number of hours worked in that week. The employee is entitled to an additional one-half times this regular rate for each hour over 40, plus the full piecework earnings.

Example: An employee paid on a piecework basis works 45 hours in a week and earns $405. The regular rate of pay for that week is $405 divided by 45, or $9.00 an hour. In addition to the straight-time pay, the employee is also entitled to $4.50 (half the regular rate) for each hour over 40 - an additional $22.50 for the 5 overtime hours - for a total of $427.50.

Another way to compensate pieceworkers for overtime, if agreed to before the work is performed, is to pay one and one-half times the piece rate for each piece produced during the overtime hours. The piece rate must be the one actually paid during nonovertime hours and must be enough to yield at least the minimum wage per hour.

3. Salary - The regular rate for an employee paid a salary for a regular or specified number of hours a week is obtained by dividing the salary by the number of hours for which the salary is intended to compensate. The employee is entitled to an additional one-half times this regular rate for each hour over 40, plus the salary.

If, under the employment agreement, a salary sufficient to meet the minimum wage requirement in every workweek is paid as straight time for whatever number of hours are worked in a workweek, the regular rate is obtained by dividing the salary by the number of hours worked each week. To illustrate, suppose an employee's hours of work vary each week and the agreement with the employer is that the employee will be paid $480 a week for whatever number of hours of work are required. Under this agreement, the regular rate will vary in overtime weeks. If the employee works 50 hours, the regular rate is $9.60 ($480 divided by 50 hours). In addition to the salary, half the regular rate, or $4.80, is due for each of the 10 overtime hours, for a total of $528 for the week. If the employee works 60 hours, the regular rate is $8.00 ($480 divided by 60 hours). In that case, an additional $4.00 is due for each of the 20 overtime hours for a total of $560 for the week.

In no case may the regular rate be less than the minimum wage required by the FLSA.

If a salary is paid on other than a weekly basis, the weekly pay must be determined in order to compute the regular rate and overtime pay. If the salary is for a half month, it must be multiplied by 24 and the product divided by 52 weeks to get the weekly equivalent. A monthly salary should be multiplied by 12 and the product divided by 52.

Enforcement Through Investigation

WHD enforcement of the FLSA is carried out by investigators stationed across the country. As WHD authorized representatives, they conduct investigations and gather data on wages, hours, and other employment conditions in order to determine compliance with the law regardless of workers' immigration status. Where violations are found, they will recommend changes in employment practices in employment practices to bring an employer into compliance.

Enforcement Through Legal Remedies

The FLSA allows the Department of Labor ("Department") or an employee to recover back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages where minimum wage and overtime violations exist. Generally, a 2-year statute of limitations applies to the recovery of back wages and liquidated damages. A 3-year statute of limitations applies in cases involving willful violations.

Remedies may be recovered through administrative procedures, litigation, and/or criminal prosecution.

Administrative procedures:

The Department is authorized to supervise the payment of unpaid minimum wages and/ or unpaid overtime compensation owed to any employee(s).

In lieu of litigation, the Department may seek back wages and liquidated damages, through settlements with employers.

Civil money penalties may be assessed for child labor violations and for repeat and/or willful violations of FLSA minimum wage or overtime requirements.

Employers who willfully or repeatedly violate minimum wage or overtime pay requirements are subject to civil money penalties for each violation.

Employers who violate the child labor provisions of the FLSA may be subject to civil money penalties. These penalties may be increased for each violation that results in the death or serious injury of an employee who is a minor, and may be doubled if the violation was determined to be willful or repeated.

For current penalty amounts, see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa#cmp.

Litigation procedures:

The Department may file suit on behalf of employees for back wages, an equal amount in liquidated damages, and civil money penalties where appropriate.

The Department may seek a U.S. District Court injunction to restrain violations of the law, including the unlawful withholding of proper minimum wage and overtime pay, failure to keep proper records, and retaliation against employees who file complaints and/or cooperate with the Department.

The Department may seek an order for payment of civil money penalties from a U.S. Department of Labor Administrative Law Judge where appropriate.

An employee may file a private suit to recover back wages, an equal amount in liquidated damages, plus attorney's fees and court costs. In such a case, the Department will not seek the same back wages and liquidated damages on that employee's behalf.

The FLSA provides that DOL may seek a U.S. District Court order to prevent the shipment of the affected goods.

Criminal prosecution:

Employers who have willfully violated the law may be subject to criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment.

Retaliation is Prohibited

Employees who have filed complaints or provided information cannot be discriminated against or discharged on account of such activity. If adverse action is taken against an employee for engaging in protected activity, the affected employee or the Secretary of Labor may file suit for relief, including reinstatement to his/her job, payment of lost wages, and damages.

Other Labor Laws

In addition to the FLSA, WHD enforces and administers a number of other labor laws. Among these are:

1. the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts, which require payment of prevailing wage rates and fringe benefits on federally-financed or assisted construction;

2. the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, which requires payment of minimum wage rates and overtime pay on contracts to provide goods to the Federal Government;

3. the Service Contract Act, which requires payment of prevailing wage rates and fringe benefits on contracts to provide services to the Federal Government;

4. the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, which sets overtime standards for service and construction contracts;

5. the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, which protects farm workers by imposing certain requirements on agricultural employers and associations and requires the registration of crewleaders who must also provide the same worker protections;

6. the Wage Garnishment Law, which limits the amount of an individual's income that may be legally garnished and prohibits firing an employee whose pay is garnished for payment of a single debt;

7. the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which prohibits most private employers from using any type of lie detector test either for pre-employment screening of job applicants or for testing current employees during the course of employment;

8. the Family and Medical Leave Act, which entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave each year, with maintenance of group health insurance, for the birth and care of a child, for the placement of a child for adoption or foster care, for the care of a child, spouse, or parent with a serious health condition, or for the employee's serious health condition; and

9. the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, which:

under the H-2A provisions, provides for the enforcement of contractual obligations of job offers which have been certified to by employers of temporary alien nonimmigrant agricultural workers;

under the H-2B provisions, provides for the enforcement of employment conditions in the application for alien nonimmigrants in temporary, non-agricultural jobs;

under the H-1C provisions, provides for the enforcement of employment conditions attested to by employers in disadvantaged areas employing H-1C temporary alien nonimmigrant registered nurses;

under the D-1 provisions, provides for the enforcement of employment conditions attested to by employers seeking to employ alien crewmembers to perform specified longshore activity at U.S. ports; and

under the H-1B provisions, provides for the enforcement of labor condition applications filed by employers wishing to employ aliens in specialty occupations and as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability.

More detailed information on the FLSA and other laws administered by WHD is available by calling our toll-free help line 1-866-4US-WAGE (1-866-487-9243). For those who have access to the Internet, further information may also be obtained on WHD's Internet Home Page which can be located at the following address: www.dol.gov/agencies/whd.

Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (SBREFA)

In accordance with the provisions of the SBREFA, the Small Business Administration established a National Small Business and Agriculture Regulatory Ombudsman and 10 Regional Fairness Boards to receive comments from small entities about federal agency enforcement actions. The Ombudsman annually evaluates enforcement activities and rates each agency's responsiveness to small entities. Small entities wishing to comment on WHD enforcement activities may call 1-888-REG-FAIR (1-888-734-3247), or write the Office of the National Ombudsman, U.S. Small Business Administration, 409 3rd Street, SW, MC2120, Washington, DC 20416-0005, or visit the Ombudsman's internet website, www.sba.gov/ombudsman/.

The right to file a comment with the Ombudsman is in addition to any other rights a small entity may have, including the right to contest the assessment of a civil money penalty. Filing a comment with the Ombudsman neither extends the maximum time period for contesting the assessment of a penalty, nor takes the place of filing the response required to secure an administrative hearing on a penalty. WHD does not consider filing of a comment with the Ombudsman as a factor in determining how to resolve issues raised during a compliance action.

Equal Pay Provisions

The equal pay provisions of the FLSA prohibit sex-based wage differentials between men and women employed in the same establishment who perform jobs that require equal skill, effort, and responsibility and which are performed under similar working conditions. These provisions, as well as other statutes prohibiting discrimination in employment, are enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. More detailed information is available by calling 1-800-669-4000 or visiting www.eeoc.gov.

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Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act

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New: Interactive Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act (PDF) (For best printout, see the PDF version ( Spanish).)Revised November 2023 The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments.