Statement by the President Upon Releasing Report of the Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion.

JOHN W. SNYDER'S REPORT on reconversion, which I have read with great interest, should be required reading for every thinking American. I hope, particularly, that it will be studied carefully by every skeptic who thinks that this country is in bad shape and is not doing a remarkable job in changing over from war to peace.

The facts in the Sixth Report of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion are grounds for optimism and a redoubling of our energy to get that job done. We still have large, critical problems ahead of us, but we are over the hump of reconversion.

Production of goods and services for the civilian market is higher today than ever before in the Nation's history, in war or in peace, and is still going up.

Employment, which dropped off after V-J Day, is building up steadily, and nonagricultural employment is now above the V-J Day level. Unemployment is around three million, which is lower than any of us thought possible six months ago. Private wage and salary payments, which dipped sharply after V-J Day, are now around the V-J Day level. The public debt, which necessarily grew to give us our airplanes and guns, has now stopped rising and our revenues and expenditures are more nearly in balance.

The wage-price policy is being translated into action without losing vital ground to inflation, and many industries have signed labor-management contracts and are ready for uninterrupted production. More than nine million persons have received wage increases since V-J Day. This little known fact--overshadowed by the few critical disputes that have received widespread publicity-is a tribute to management and labor in many industries and companies, who have quietly composed their differences with wisdom and dispatch.

We must not be complacent about these good signs of progress. We cannot afford to relax for one minute our battle against inflation. Our progress to date will be completely nullified if we do not have an early extension of our price control and stabilization laws, for without them progress will be turned into economic chaos. Likewise, protracted work stoppages in any one of a number of important fields--for instance in the coal industry--could seriously delay our progress. Housing, too, is an immediate problem requiring immediate action.

These are critical problems, but they are being faced by a great country that is coming out of its war years as a strong and healthy Nation.

We have not always sufficiently appreciated this strength and economic health. But they are the source of our confidence and power to move toward an age of full employment and production, of high standards of living and of active world trade. They give us the determination to be united, knowing that what is best for all of us is likewise best for each of us.

Only as a united Nation can we hope for a united World.