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This article traces the institutional history of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) from its legislative origins in the Hoover administration through its dissolution in December 1935. For the broader policy context of New Deal relief programs, see the New Deal History page.

In the early years of the Great Depression, emergency relief for the unemployed rested almost entirely on state and local governments and private charities. As unemployment climbed toward 20 percent of the total labor force by mid-1932 - and toward 50 percent in industries such as steel and automobiles - municipal and county relief organizations in major cities approached collapse. Philadelphia suspended relief payments outright; Chicago's system was near failure.

President Herbert Hoover had resisted direct federal relief grants on constitutional and philosophical grounds, preferring to channel federal assistance through loans rather than outright appropriations. In the spring of 1932 he proposed enlarging the newly created Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to extend emergency loans to states. Congress sent him a broader relief bill; he vetoed it on July 11, 1932, objecting to provisions he regarded as a “pork barrel.” A compromise measure passed both chambers within days, and Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act (ERCA) on July 21, 1932. The ERCA authorized $300 million in RFC loans to states for relief purposes and $322 million for federal public works - constituting the first large-scale federal public welfare appropriation in American history. Funds moved as loans, not grants, and states were required to demonstrate exhaustion of their own resources before qualifying.

Several states had begun developing their own emergency programs independently. New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt established the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA) in 1931, appointing Harry Hopkins - a career social worker from Sioux City, Iowa - as its director.

Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933. During the transition period and in the opening days of the new administration, Roosevelt and Hopkins planned a successor to the ERCA framework. The Federal Emergency Relief Act passed Congress as part of the First Hundred Days legislative program and was signed into law on May 12, 1933. The act created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Roosevelt appointed Hopkins as administrator on May 19.

The statute authorized $500 million in federal expenditures. Half was to be distributed on a matching basis - one federal dollar for every three dollars a state had spent on relief from its own funds in the preceding three months. The remaining half was available as discretionary grants to states that could not meet the matching requirement. The critical departure from the ERCA framework was that FERA funds were grants, not loans; states were not required to repay them.

Hopkins assembled a staff within 48 hours of his appointment and immediately contacted the governors of all 48 states with procedures for applying for grants.

At the time FERA was created, estimates of unemployment ranged from approximately 14 to 15 million workers - more than one-quarter of the civilian labor force. Many cities and states were at or near bankruptcy. Roughly 1.5 million people were without stable shelter.

FERA was constituted as a granting agency; it did not directly employ relief workers but disbursed funds to state emergency relief administrations, which in turn operated programs through county and municipal agencies. Hopkins assigned federal field investigators - among them journalist Lorena Hickok - to report on conditions in states and assess how funds were being spent.

The initial program emphasized both direct relief (cash payments for food and shelter) and work relief (payment for labor on public projects). Hopkins and Roosevelt both preferred work relief over direct cash payments, which they and many contemporaries referred to as “the dole,” viewing wages for work as less corrosive to recipients' self-regard and independence than unconditional cash.

FERA's enabling legislation also established the Federal Transient Program (FTP) in May 1933. Because most state relief laws denied aid to non-residents, transient unemployed workers - those residing in a state for less than a year - were systematically excluded from state programs. The FTP covered 100 percent of local government costs for assisting this population. At its peak it operated more than 600 facilities serving approximately one million people, providing food, housing, medical care, and limited employment. The population served was predominantly young, native-born working-class men, though women and black Americans were also present.

An Emergency Education Program began in late November 1933, providing classes in adult education, part-time employment for college students, and assistance to rural schools unable to pay teachers during the Depression.

By autumn 1933, with winter approaching and unemployment still severe, the pace of FERA-funded work relief was judged insufficient. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6420-B on November 8-9, 1933, establishing the Civil Works Administration (CWA) as a temporary emergency employment measure to carry unskilled workers through the winter of 1933-34. Hopkins was simultaneously appointed administrator of both agencies.

The CWA was funded by draws from the Public Works Administration ($400 million), FERA appropriations ($89 million), and a direct congressional appropriation ($345 million), for a total of approximately $834 million. Two million workers transferred directly from FERA rolls to CWA employment. By January 18, 1934, the CWA employed 4,263,644 workers nationwide. Projects concentrated on medium and small-scale construction: approximately one-third of CWA workers improved or built roads and highways; another large group worked on schools and playgrounds. The agency also built approximately 500 airports, improved parks and waterways, and employed teachers, writers, and artists. Some 50,000 teachers were deployed to rural schools that could not otherwise afford to pay them.

Roosevelt and Treasury officials grew concerned about the cost and about the prospect of making CWA employment permanent. The CWA was wound down through spring 1934, with most employment ending by March 31, 1934, and the agency formally dissolved in July 1934. Relief responsibilities reverted to the FERA-state partnership.

Following the CWA's closure, Hopkins reorganized FERA into three operating divisions: social service, public works, and rural rehabilitation. The revised structure reflected a broader conception of relief than emergency subsistence. FERA took on programs in rural rehabilitation, drought relief, and an expanded adult education effort. Workers' education classes - focusing on economic and labor topics from a working-class perspective - were incorporated into the adult education program; between 1933 and 1943 the federal program launched 36 experimental workers' education projects, of which 17 continued for more than a decade.

By the first half of 1935, more than five million cases per month were receiving FERA emergency relief. The agency had distributed $3.1 billion in federal grants to states and localities since its founding.

In the spring of 1935, the Roosevelt administration concluded that open-ended federal grants for direct relief should give way to permanent social insurance and wage-based employment. The Social Security Act, signed August 14, 1935, established a permanent federal framework for old-age assistance and unemployment insurance. Concurrently, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Executive Order 7034 on May 6, 1935, with Hopkins as administrator, to absorb the employable unemployed from FERA rolls into federally administered work programs.

FERA's dissolution was gradual. The agency continued operations through the remainder of 1935 as WPA stood up its own programs, formally ceasing operations in December 1935. Over its two-and-a-half-year existence FERA had served more than 20 million people and disbursed approximately $3.1 billion (equivalent to roughly $70 billion in 2023 dollars).

Whether FERA and the broader New Deal relief apparatus shortened or prolonged the Great Depression remains disputed among economists; see New Deal Economics Debate.

Some historians argue that FERA's administrative reliance on state governments perpetuated racial disparities in relief distribution, particularly in Southern states; see New Deal - Race Viewpoint.

The extent to which FERA represented a structural departure from Hoover-era policy versus an elaboration of it - given that both programs relied on the same state-local administrative infrastructure - is contested; see New Deal Continuity Debate.

Whether the preference for work relief over direct cash payments reflected principled policy or political calculation by the Roosevelt administration is debated among historians of the New Deal; see FERA - Work Relief Debate.

1. Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, Pub. L. 73-15, 48 Stat. 55 (May 12, 1933).
2. Frances T. Bourne, Administrative History of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Work Projects Administration (Department of Interior Archives, March 1946).
3. Federal Works Agency, Final Statistical Report of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942).
4. Harry L. Hopkins, Spending to Save: The Complete Story of Relief (New York: W.W. Norton, 1936).
5. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958).
6. Emergency Relief and Construction Act, ch. 520, 47 Stat. 709 (July 21, 1932).
7. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 6420-B (November 9, 1933).
8. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 7034 (May 6, 1935).
9. National Archives, Records of the Work Projects Administration, RG 69.
10. John P. Deeben, “Family Experiences and New Deal Relief: The Correspondence Files of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 1933-1936,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives 44, no. 2 (Fall 2012).