Roosevelt signs a national framework for nonprofit lending cooperatives into law

Four years into the Great Depression, millions of Americans had no reliable access to credit except through loan sharks or banks that had just finished collapsing. On June 26, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act, creating a national framework for nonprofit, cooperative lending institutions chartered under either federal or state law. Edward Filene, Pierre Jay, and Roy Bergengren — who had spent years pushing credit union legislation through reluctant Congresses — finally had their statute. The dual-chartering system the Act established still governs every credit union in the country today…