The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies.
BOARD OF GOVERNORS or THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM Office Correspondence Date. July 29, I9IU1 — Chairman Eccles « Mart* P r e P a r a ^ i ° n °f American p Professor Hansen "White Paper11 on Pull Employment You will recall that at the Bretton Woods Conference we spoke about doing something on an American "White Paper* on Pull Employment, At your suggestion I wrote to Gerhard Colm and ur^ed that a careful statement be prepared which would be used by the President. I suggested that upon your return i t wDuld be a good idea for you and Harold Smith to get together and discuss the matter. I have since seen Colm and find that my l e t t e r arrived a t a very opportune time and served to help stimulate Harold Smith into action. He had just come back from a long v i s i t with the President. They had discussed the fact that heretofore the administration had been going along on a more or less opportunist basis with respect to fiscal policy. During the war the policy has indeed been regularized more or less through the stabilization program. Smith urged, however, that in the next four years a systematic long-range program was urgently necessary and indeed, without i t , the course of events might prove quite disastrous. The President appeared to be sympathetic with this idea. My l e t t e r came, as you know, too late to do anything with the platform and anyway that was probably not in the cards. Colm and I are agreed, however, that there should now be drawn up two papers: fl) a systematic document on full employment policy which the President mifht transmit to a Congressional committee fengineered perhaps so that the committee invites such action); (2) a "fireside chat11 on a systematic full employment program. I w^uld urge that you arrange to see Harold Smith at the earliest possible moment. Indeed, he is expecting you to call Mm about this matter. If the above suggestions are agreeable to vou, Colm and. I (with perhaps Dick Gilbert, Ben Cohen, and Emile Despres) would pet together periodically within the rext few weeks and attempt to work up a f i r s t - c l a s s statement along both lines suggested above. While -ftie drafting i s going on we should, I think, meet from time to time with you and Harold Smith and possibly Eosenman and Hopkins, in order to shape up the drafts in the best possible manner* If you could see Harold Smith within the next two or three days, Smith would then /dve the green light to Colm and we could pet busy next week. A.H.H.
@FedFRASER