Letter to the Rubber Director and the Price Administrator on the Rubber Conservation Program.
Following submission of the Baruch rubber report to me in September, I asked that mileage rationing be extended throughout the Nation. Certain printing and transportation problems made it necessary to delay the program until December first.
With every day that passes, our need for this rubber conservation measure grows more acute. It is the Army's need and the Navy's need. They must have rubber. We, as civilians, must conserve our tires.
The Baruch Committee said: "We find the existing situation to be so dangerous that unless corrective measures are taken immediately this country will face both a military and civilian collapse .... In rubber we are a have-not Nation."
Since then the situation has become more acute, not less. Since then our military requirements for rubber have become greater, not smaller. Since then many tons of precious rubber have been lost through driving not essential to the war effort. We must keep every pound we can on our wheels to maintain our wartime transportation system.
We must do everything within our power to see that the program starts December first because victory must not be delayed through failure to support our fighting forces.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Letter to the Rubber Director and the Price Administrator on the Rubber Conservation Program. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/210250