Trade Board's Arbitration Committee from 1923 to 1924 and again from 1937 to 1940. "First" NLRB In 1934, Millis was named a member of the "first" National Labor Relations Board. On June 16, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) into law. Title I, Section 7(a) of the Act guaranteed the right of workers to form unions, and it set off a massive wave of union organizing punctuated by employer and union violence, general strikes, and recognition strikes. Although it was felt Section 7(a) would be self-policing, that assumption failed almost immediately. On August 5, 1933, President Roosevelt announced that the National Recovery Administration was being instructed to establish a National Labor Board (NLB) to administer Section 7(a). (Millis served as the vice-chair of the NLB's Chicago office.) But the NLB provided ineffective without any statutory or regulatory powers, so Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6511 on December 16, 1933, to strengthen the NLB and give it the force of executive authority. But this, too, proved too little to deal with the tremendous labor relations problems facing the country. Finally, threatened with a major strike in the steel industry and a Senate labor relations bill moving forward without presidential input, Roosevelt personally drafted Public Resolution No. 44, a bill which authorized the president to create one or more new labor boards to enforce Section 7(a) by conducting investigations, subpoenaing evidence and witnesses, holding elections, and issuing orders. It passed both houses of Congress on June 16, and Roosevelt signed it into law on June 19, 1934. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6073 on June 29, 1934, which abolished the NLB and established the National Labor Relations Board. The three-person board was empowered to hold hearings and make findings of fact, investigate violations of Section 7(a), and hold union organizing elections to resolve labor disputes. Millis expressed no interest in serving on the NLRB. Nonetheless, he was asked to join the new board based on his national reputation as an arbitrator, and agreed to do so. Millis was sworn in as a member of the "first" NLRB on July 9, 1934. Millis played a role in keeping the "first" NLRB independent. The NLRB's chairman, 36-year-old Lloyd K. Garrison, had agreed to serve as the chair only to get the board up and running, and he resigned on October 2, 1934, to resume his position as dean of the