White House Statement on Executive Order 6569 on Preventing Monopolistic Practices under N.R.A. Codes

The President today signed an Executive Order (No. 6569) to provide a practical and rapid way for making effective those provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act that were designed to prevent persons, under the guise of purported sanctions contained in codes of fair competition or independently or in defiance of such codes, from engaging in monopolistic practices or practices tending to eliminate, oppress or discriminate against small enterprises.

Where a complainant shall have been dissatisfied with the disposition of his case by the agency of the Government which he may have invoked, the complainant may press his case before the Federal Trade Commission. If this Commission has no jurisdiction to handle the complaint, it is to be referred to the Department of Justice. Under such a method, grievances arising out of codes of fair competition or based upon violations of those portions of the anti-trust laws of the United States that prohibit monopolistic practices, can be adequately aired and settled by disinterested governmental agencies in accordance with the principles set forth in the recovery legislation. The Federal Trade Commission, in handling such complaints, will follow the procedure set forth in its organic act—a procedure that is informal, not costly to the complainant, and expeditious.

These agencies, equipped with wide knowledge of and long experience in issues of this nature, will be able to carve an ordered and just solution of the pressing economic problems necessarily raised by the application of the principles inherent in the recovery program. Conceptions as to what practices are monopolistic and are beyond the allowable area of the National Industrial Recovery Act will thereby be enabled to rest upon realistic foundations of the place to be accorded to concentrated capital and cooperative effort in our modern economic civilization. The result should be a coherent body of law, protective of the large consuming interests and yet broad enough to afford the necessary play for industry to act as a unit, free from the pressure of unrestrained and wasteful competition. Such pathways lead to industrial peace in the fullest sense of that word, a peace that will be just to the various contending interests and which will afford a permanent basis for our economic reconstruction.