Message to Congress Transmitting a Report on the National Recovery Administration.

To the Congress:

I transmit herewith a Report on the operation of the National Industrial Recovery Administration, which has been prepared by those members of the Committee on Industrial Analysis who have no official relationship to the government. They are Professor J. M. Clark of Columbia University, an economist; Mr. William H. Davis of New York City, a lawyer; Mr. George M. Harrison, of Cincinnati, Ohio, President of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, and also Chairman of the Railway Labor Executives Association; and Mr. George H. Mead of Dayton, Ohio, a manufacturer and former Chairman, Business Advisory Council.

This Report is based on an exhaustive study of the work of the National Recovery Administration, which has been in progress ever since June, 1935, and which has been carried on since March, 1936, under the direction of the Committee on Industrial Analysis, which I created by Executive Order, which consisted of the four non-governmental members who make this Report, and the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor. The staff work for this Committee has been performed by the Division of Industrial Economics in the Department of Commerce.

This Report presents the first adequate survey by an impartial group of the entire work of the National Recovery Administration, reviewing the objectives, the successes and failures of attainment, the administration and the legal problems of the National Recovery Administration. The exhaustive collection of code histories, statistical information and staff studies, which provided the basis for this Report, are now available for further research by students interested in the many phases of the relationships between government and industry.

The Report of the Committee should furnish invaluable aid to the Congress in the consideration and determination of vital legislative problems. This Report, with its admirable, well balanced weighing of controversial issues and its impartial review of complicated factual situations, provides a dispassionate consideration of a host of problems as to which emotion, self-interest and prejudice have too frequently obscured the truth. It is worthy of the most serious consideration by the Congress and should be made available for widespread study and discussion. In my opinion, it will point the way to the solution of many vexing problems of legislation and administration in one of the most vital subjects of national concern.