Letter from R. Martin to President Harry S. Truman

28 misc Beverly Hills Calif. Feb. 21 46. n President of the United States Ex. Mansion-1600 Penn.Av. Washington TRUNAN D.C. NATTORAL ARCHIVES AMO For SECORDS SERVICE President Truman: There is considerable doubt in the minds of many people, as to the ability of Chester Bowles to handle the duties of Stabilization Director, because of his ill-natured attack on the National Association of Manufacturers, and his critism of Henry Ford II. His name-calling attack on young Ford showed either a willful distortion of the facts or a misund- erstanding of Ford policy Mr Ford when he asserted that the quickest way to get production going is to let the market make prices under competitive conditions merely states a fact obvious to everybody. It is simply silly for Mr Bowles to suppose that Ford is anxious to sell so high nobody would buy them. It is not "Big Business" which is worse affected by restrictive price policies, for they can run at a loss for a limited time, but small manufact- urers lack the money to do this.Bowles policies rest- rict production and we can name any number of specific instances of restriction, anyone of which are actually more inflationary in their effect than abandoment of price control. It is simple ignorance for him to assume that he can know the cost of conducting a business to manufacture automobiles, steel or any other products. We want no business in this country discour- aged or destroyed. A plentiful supply, of the things we need, and keen competition will control, and mean lower prices for every thing.OPA celings endeavor to force production, in 1946, at 1942 prices, and are the basic reasons why manufacturers aren't producing materials for houses, why you can't get butter, except on the black market, and so on indefinitely. Bowles wants to extend this mess for another year, and then for another, and another, and on and on.