Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense:
Subject: Automotive and Related Procurement.
This refers to your March fourteenth informal report to me on progess in achieving an effective spread of governmental procurement in the automotive and related fields, so as to include continuing programs of work for the smaller, as well as the larger, companies.1 As you know, I am interested in this for several reasons:
(a) I intend to do all in my power to see that no action of the government creates a tendency toward a monopoly;
(b) I want to help in the preservation of a mobilization base dispersed among different companies and business leaders, as well as geographically; and
(c) I want to see smaller companies on a comparative footing with others in the conviction that competition between big and little, as well as between the giants themselves, will certainly result to the benefit of our entire economy and of our people.
I am today leaving the city for a week.2 During my absence, will you please have prepared another brief progress report on what results have been achieved by the Defense Department in spreading this type of work, whether such spread is accomplished on a direct or on a sub-contracting basis.
I do not desire that a staff consume a lot of time in preparing a report in unnecessary detail. I want to know the certainty and magnitude of progress and to have the assurance that this matter is constantly engaging the attention of responsible officials. If such a report could be sent to my office by the twenty-first, that would be early enough.3
