How did the National Recovery Administration attempt to improve the economy in the United States?

The National Recovery Administration (NRA), was created by an executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the conditions during the Great Depression. The NRA was designed to combat two aspects of the economy seen as significant factors hindering progress - poor working conditions and wages and plummeting prices. The way that these were dealt with was by forming codes to be adopted by all industries. These included the allowance of unions as well as limiting the work week and paying employees a reasonable wage. Also, prices were fixed by the government in the hopes that it would stabilize the economy and prevent prices from dropping further. 

The NRA was not viewed as a success. The first reason was that all of the codes forced onto businesses by the NRA were difficult and cumbersome for the business owners to follow and implement. Ultimately, it was a business owner who took the NRA to the Supreme Court where it was ruled unconstitutional. The second reason that it failed was that the pricing practices of the government took hold way before the union and workforce wage programs took effect. This meant that workers were not seeing increased wages while the cost of goods was rising. This lead to a worsening of the situation instead of leading to more stability. 

The National Recovery Administration was an intervention that had some solid ideas about how to help the nation recover from the Great Depression, but it did not deliver. While the NRA is regarded as a failure, some of its innovations remain to this day. Unions are still in place and sanctioned by the government, forty hour workweeks are still the norm and there are now child labor laws as a result of the legislation.