The Federal Government must protect legitimate business and consumers from predatory and monopolistic practices by the vigilant enforcement of regulatory legislation.  The program will be designed to have a maximum impact upon monopolistic bottlenecks and unfair competitive practices hindering expansion in employment.

During the war, enforcement of antimonopoly laws was suspended in a number of fields.  The Government must now take major steps not only to maintain enforcement of antitrust laws but to encourage new and competing enterprises in every way.  The deferred demand of the war years and the large accumulations of liquid assets provide ample incentive for expansion.  Equalizing of business opportunity, under full and free competition, must be a prime responsibility in the reconversion period and in the years that follow.  Many leading businessmen have recognized the importance of such action both to themselves and to the economy as a whole.

But we must do more than break up trusts and monopolies after they have begun to strangle competition.  We must take positive action to foster new, expanding enterprises.  By legislation and by administration we must take specific steps to discourage the formation or the strengthening of competition-restricting business.  We must have an over-all antimonopoly policy which can be applied by all agencies of the Government in exercising the functions assigned to them—­a policy designed to encourage the formation and growth of new and freely competitive enterprises.

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.