[5][6] The AAA, along with other New Deal programs, represented the federal government's first substantial effort to address economic welfare in the United States.

[9] Wheat, cotton, field corn, hogs, rice, tobacco, and milk and its products were designated as basic commodities in the original legislation.

[15] The Act accomplished this by offering landowners acreage reduction contracts, by which they agreed not to grow cotton on a portion of their land.

The farm wage workers who worked directly for the landowner suffered the greatest unemployment as a result of the Act.

There are few people gullible enough to believe that the acreage devoted to cotton can be reduced one-third without an accompanying decrease in the laborers engaged in its production.

[16] Researchers concluded that the statistics after the Act took effect "indicate a consistent and widespread tendency for cotton croppers and, to a considerable extent, tenants to decrease in numbers between 1930 and 1935.

Furthermore, the landowners typically let the tenants and croppers use the land taken out of cotton production for their own personal use in growing food and feed crops, which further increased their standard of living.

However, according to researcher Harold C. Hoffsommer, many landlords were concerned that aid given directly to tenant farmers would have a "demoralizing effect."

An article appearing in the St. Louis Dispatch in 1935, quoted Hoffsommer's survey conducted for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

In his criticisms of the Act, Henry Wallace's assistant Paul Appleby described it as "an organization whose function had to do with the more successful farmers by and large.

Attached as Title III to the Act, the Thomas Amendment became the 'third horse' in the New Deal's farm relief bill.

Drafted by Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, the amendment blended populist easy-money views with the theories of the New Economics.

[23] At the same time, Roosevelt issued Proclamation 2067, ordering the United States mints to buy the entire domestic production of newly mined silver at 64.5¢ per ounce.

On January 6, 1936, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Butler that the act was unconstitutional for levying this tax on the processors only to have it paid back to the farmers.

The following employees of the AAA were also alleged members of the Ware Group, named by Whittaker Chambers during subpoenaed testimony to HUAC on August 3, 1948: Harold Ware, John Abt, Lee Pressman, Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Nathan Witt, Henry Collins, Marion Bachrach (husband Howard Bachrach was also an AAA employee), John Herrmann, and Nathaniel Weyl.