On May 22, 1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was inaugurated. The chief architect of this program was Harry Hopkins, the former president and executive director of the New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration and a man who had, by 1933, 20 years of experience in social work and welfare administration. He had worked with (then Governor) Franklin Roosevelt in New York and, the two became good friends, with Hopkins serving as Roosevelt's chief advisor and confidant throughout his administration.
"When Roosevelt appointed Hopkins as director of FERA, he called him to his office for a five-minute talk. The president told the Washington newcomer two things: give immediate and adequate relief to the unemployed, and pay no attention to politics or politicians. Hopkins did just that. Thirty minutes later, seated at a makeshift desk in a hallway. He began a program committed to action rather than debate, a program that would eventually put 15 million people to work. Even more important, FERA established the doctrine that adequate public relief was a right that citizens in need could expect to receive from their government."
The FERA has three main goals 1.) Adequacy of relief measures; 2.) Providing work for employable people on the relief rolls; 3.) Diversification of relief programs.
The most pressing problem for FERA at first was to build up adequate local relief organizations. Few of the existing state relief agencies had been in existence for more than 7 or 8 months at the time of creation of FERA. Those state relief agencies that were deemed to be inadequate or flawed in some way had to be overhauled to meet the requirements of FERA. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which was alloted a start-up fund of $500 million from the Concretion Finance Corporation
Most states had little experience with running genuine work relief programs and almost no experience in providing appropriate work for white-collar workers. Despite directives and orders issued in 1933, states and localities were not quick to cooperate by accepting federal projects. Either through inertia or a desire to institute projects of purely local interest and benefit, state involvement in work relief programs were slow to start in 1933. Faced with continued high unemployment and concerns for public welfare during the coming winter of 1933-34, FERA institute the Civil Works Administration (CWA) as a short-term measure to get people to work.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/feraweb/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Emergency_Relief_Administration
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