# National Industrial Recovery Act **Signed:** June 16, 1933 by [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] The high-water mark of American industrial planning, and the only period in which federal policy deliberately **suspended** the antitrust laws. Title I authorized industry-drafted "codes of fair competition" — setting prices, output, wages, and hours — subject to presidential approval, and **§5 exempted approved codes from antitrust liability**. Administered by the National Recovery Administration under Hugh Johnson, with the Blue Eagle as its public seal. The theory was that ruinous competition, not monopoly, had caused the Depression. Roughly 550 codes were approved. In practice the largest firms in each industry wrote the codes. [[Schechter Poultry v. United States]] (May 27, 1935) struck down Title I unanimously on three grounds: "fair competition" was undefined, the delegation of legislative power was unconstitutionally broad, and the regulated activity was intrastate. Title I's collapse forced the [[New Deal]] to choose between planning and antitrust — and by 1938 it had chosen antitrust, in the person of [[Thurman Arnold]]. > Stub — fill out. See [[US Antitrust and Monopoly Timeline]].