Guffey Coal Act


The Guffey-Snyder Act was a law, officially known as the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act of 1935, passed in the United States in 1935 under Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his New Deal. It created the Bituminous Coal Commission to set the price of coal and end other unfair practices of competition. The law also created the Bituminous Coal Labor Board to regulate maximum work hours and minimum wage but was later ruled to be unconstitutional because by giving power to the federal government to control prices, it infringed upon the economic liberty of free enterprise.
It was replaced in 1937 with the Guffey-Vinson Coal Act, which the Supreme Court found constitutional. The act resurrected the Bituminous Coal Commission and reinstated the provisions regulation price fixing and unfair practices but removed the labor provisions of the previous act. In 1939, the Bituminous Coal Commission was abolished, and its duties were transferred to the US Department of the Interior.