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White House Statement on the Economy Conference - With Navy Department Officials.

June 06, 1931

EVERY DIVISION of the Navy was gone over with great care at the conference this afternoon to ascertain the economies that could be made in the Navy without sacrificing efficiency.

The President was advised that the economies during the past year have amounted to $10 million, the result largely of the fleet operating program established by Admiral Pratt.

Navy officials said preliminary estimates of economies for the next year would run from $10 to $15 million. Exhaustive studies are in progress in all different operations of the Navy with a view to increasing savings wherever possible without injury to needed employment and efficiency in training.

It was determined, in view of a report by the Navy that Guam no longer has any military value, that all activities there would be reduced to the minimum basis required for the civil government of the island.

Note: The White House issued the statement following a conference at the president's camp on the Rapidan River. Secretary of the Navy Charles F. Adams, Assistant Secretaries David S. Ingalls and Ernest Lee Jahncke, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William V. Pratt, Commandant of the Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Ben Fuller, and other naval officials attended the meeting.

The statement, as printed above, follows the text of a contemporary news account, which printed the release in full.

Herbert Hoover, White House Statement on the Economy Conference - With Navy Department Officials. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/211056

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