Excerpt from The Structure of the American Economy, Vol. 1: Basic Characteristics; A Report Prepared by the Industrial Section; June 1939

Earlier reports of the National Resources Committee and its predecessors have examined the Nation's material resources of land, water, and minerals; the changing character of the population which seeks to utilize these resources; and the improving engineering techniques whereby resources are used to serve human wants. In each of these reports a major aspect of the national household has been sketched in with a greater or less degree of detail in order to give a background for the development of major national policies and to provide a larger frame of reference within which specific problems in specific fields could be more intensively analyzed.

In this report on the Structure of the American Economy an effort is made to bring the major aspects of the national economy into focus so as to emphasize the organic character of the process whereby the Nation's resources are employed to pro vide useful commodities and services. This emphasis on organization requires that the national community he treated as a single functioning whole and in such a way that every phase of human activity is covered insofar as it involves the use of resources. Only by bringing all the different aspects of the national economy into a single frame of reference can a basis be laid for developing effective policies in respect to particular aspects.

This frame of reference is so broad in scope that it has been necessary to introduce certain limitations in order to keep the report within manageable proportions. The first of these is the concentration of the report on what have been called the structural characteristics of the national economy - those characteristics which Show a high degree of continuity - changing only gradually or not at all and giving to the American economy its particular character. The second limitation is introduced by seeking out only what are believed to be the main structural characteristics, especially those which appear to be of major Significance for the problem of obtaining more effective use of national resources. A third limitation has developed inadvertently. Certain major structural characteristics are not covered or are only very inadequately covered in the report. On some of these such as the trend of consumer savings, data are so completely lacking that they could not be included. Others were to be included according to the original plans for the report but the investigations necessary to their inclusion were incomplete or inadequate to allow their inclusion without unwarranted delay in publication. The most serious omission of this sort is an analysis of the debt and ownership structure and the structural aspects of interest rates. Such gaps are indicated at the appropriate point-s in the text. In Spite of its shortcomings, the report is presented in the hope that it can give added background for the development of national policies respecting the use resources.

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