The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was inaugurated in 1933 under the Roosevelt administration, the chief architect being Harry Hopkins. At that time, the Great Depressions was in its depths, with 15 million unemployed Americans dependent upon relief money from the government to survive, With many banks and businesses closed, little aid or direction had been given to state governments and their people.
The FERA had three main objectives: establish the adequacy of relief measures, provide work for employable people on relief rolls, and to diversify relief programs. It accepted all needy persons and their dependents to receive relief and to maintain a minimum standard of living. It was estimated at that time that about three-fourths of the heads of families on relief were employable, and thus FERA set it as a goal to create work opportunities to give these workers employment and to allow them to work in order to earn their pay.
The purpose of FERA was to work with state governments in providing federal grants for relief purposes. States were required to provide information on the amounts necessary to meet relief needs in the state as well as to provide information on provisions made to assure adequate administrative supervisions of the funds. However, the most pressing problem for FERA was to first build up adequate local relief organizations, as many state organizations had only been in existence for less than 8 months prior to the creation of FERA. Most states had little experience with running work relief programs and providing appropriate work for white-collar workers. Thus, states and localities weren't quick enough to cooperate by accepting federal projects.
During the two years that the FERA was in existence, the transient relief bureaus created provided food and shelter to those in need, and in certain cases, a job. The transient were people who had lived less than twelve months in a state in which they were applying for aid. While FERA was disproportional in giving out aid to those who really needed it, the program was a contributor in providing more jobs and aid to families hit hard by the Depression and showed that the government was willing to help the people during times of crises.
Source:
http://content.lib.washington.edu/feraweb/essay.html
Julia, I really liked how clear and straightforward your blog post was and how it managed to explain everything important about FERA to me without overcomplicating anything. I didn't know about its "three main goals" and was particularly intrigued by exactly what kinds of relief they had put into play. I decided to research this a little bit and found that the organization's purpose was initially to distribute 500 million dollars in federal funds to state agencies. These funds were given out as grants and not loans.
ReplyDeleteSource: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Federal_Emergency_Relief_Administration