http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1610.html<snip>
Soon noticed by then New York governor Franklin Roosevelt, Hopkins was asked to run the first state relief organization in the nation, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). By the time FDR gained the presidency in 1933, 25 percent of the American work force was unemployed, in spite of former President Hoover's eventual recognition of the depth of the continuing economic depression. Hopkins was recruited into FDR's Brain Trust, which included several of Hopkins’s Grinnell College alumni. Hopkins served as Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940.
With the national stage set for massive changes, the Brain Trust explored economic and social policies that would begin to stabilize the American economy. Taking America off the Gold Standard, creating the Emergency Banking Act/Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) are but two examples. They also created policies to provide direct aid to Americans through the new Federal Emergency Relief Administration, (FERA). Hopkins was the first chief of FERA.
The FDR administration soon increased funds to FERA, and added additional programs to get people back to work and revitalize the American economy. Hopkins and the Brain Trust were criticized for excessive spending by conservative members of Congress, who claimed that the economy would sort itself out in the long run. To which Hopkins replied, "People don't eat in the long run, they eat every day." There were other sinister forces to the left of the Democratic Party that concerned FDR. Louisiana U.S. Senator and firebrand populist Huey P. Long believed FDR had not gone far enough to help America’s poor, and the Communist Party was gaining political ground at the time.
Hopkins worked closely with the First Lady to promote and defend other relief agencies that include the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Federal Surplus Relief Administration, (FSRA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Most of those programs existed to the end of their usefulness, some were challenged in court and eventually cancelled, but the TVA remains a powerful and accepted agency to this day. The National Labor Relations Act, (Wagner Act, 1935), which instituted collective bargaining in the workplace, and the creation of the Social Security Administration, were two of the most powerful and durable programs of the New Deal
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