Among the many departments and agencies which have parts in the program affecting business and competition, the Department of Commerce has a particularly important role.  That is why I have recommended a substantial increase in appropriations for the next fiscal year for this Department.

In its assistance to industry, the Department of Commerce will concentrate its efforts on these primary objectives:  Promotion of a large and well-balanced foreign trade; provision of improved technical assistance and management aids, especially for small enterprises; and strengthening of basic statistics on business operations, both by industries and by regions.  To make new inventions and discoveries available more promptly to all businesses, small and large, the Department proposes to expand its own research activities, promote research by universities, improve Patent Office procedures, and develop a greatly expanded system of field offices readily accessible to the businesses they serve.

Many gaps exist in the private financial mechanism, especially in the provision of long-term funds for small- and medium sized enterprises.  In the peacetime economy the Reconstruction Finance Corporation will take the leadership in assuring adequate financing for small enterprises which cannot secure funds from other sources.  Most of the funds should and will be provided by private lenders; but the Reconstruction Finance Corporation will share any unusual risks through guarantees of private loans, with direct loans only when private capital is unwilling to participate on a reasonable basis.

(e) Minimum wage.

Full employment and full production may be achieved only by maintaining a level of consumer income far higher than that of the prewar period.  A high level of consumer income will maintain the market for the output of our mills, farms, and factories, which we have demonstrated during the war years that we can produce.  One of the basic steps which the Congress can take to establish a high level of consumer income is to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to raise substandard wages to a decent minimum and to extend similar protection to additional workers who are not covered by the present act.

Substandard wages are bad for business and for the farmer.  Substandard wages provide only a substandard market for the goods and services produced by American industry and agriculture.

At the present time the Fair Labor Standards Act prescribes a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour for those workers who are covered by the act.  The present minimum wage represents an annual income of about $800 to those continuously employed for 50 weeks—­clearly a wholly inadequate budget for an American family.  I am in full accord with the proposal now pending in the Congress that the statutory minimum be raised immediately to 65 cents an hour, with further increases to 70 cents after one year and to 75 cents after two years.  I also favor the proposal that the industry committee procedure be used to set rates higher than 65 cents per hour during the two-year interval before the 75-cent basic wage would otherwise become applicable.