Office of the Historian

Roosevelt Papers

Mr. Marvin, of the Office of Production Management, to the President

Washington, December 28, 1941.

Dear Mr. President, Thank you ever so much for the Christmas present which you and Mrs. Roosevelt gave me. I am deeply appreciative.

[Page 332]
[Enclosure 1]

Proposed Controls of Merchant Shipping

[Page 333]

Attached are some charts and ideas on Allied control of cargoes and of merchant shipping, which I have worked up after extensive discussions with interested persons,1 in the hope that they may prove suggestive to someone in your Executive Office who may be working on the problem.

Very best wishes for the New Year to you and to Mrs. Roosevelt from

your godson,

Don Marvin
[Enclosure 2]

Merchant Shipping Control

(A proposal for New Controls or Reorganization of Existing Controls)

I. Domestic Controls2

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

II. International Controls

(N.B.: These controls could be established by treaty or by executive agreement based on provisions in the statute setting up domestic controls.)

(1) Joint Shipping Board

An independent, international agency should be established, to be known as the Joint Shipping Board. Seven citizens of the United States should be appointed by the President, subject to confirmation by the United States Senate, and such appointments should extend for the duration of the unlimited national emergency. Each member of the Board should have one vote, and decisions should be made by majority vote. The seven American members of the Joint Shipping Board should complement the members appointed by other nations, to wit: by the British Commonwealth of Nations (7), by the Allied or associated powers fighting the Axis (5).

The Joint Shipping Board should be vested with control of all offshore shipping under the authority or control of the governments represented on the board. The Joint Shipping Board should be vested with the following powers:

(1)
To establish priorities certificates or a priorities list of all cargoes to be carried by the ships owned or controlled by the respective governments, and to order the ships to load these cargoes according to [Page 334] the priorities certificates or list, except where strategic or safety factors are controlling, as interpreted by the Naval authorities of the respective governments.
(2)
To control the operations of all merchant ships under the authority or control of the respective governments.
(3)
To allocate ships among the associated powers and to allocate ships to any trade routes or areas.
(4)
To recommend to the appropriate national authorities the control of port and storage facilities by the respective Naval or Maritime Commission authorities.
(5)
To recommend to the appropriate national authorities the purchase of certain commodities where such purchase is important to the defense or war effort of the associated powers.
(6)
To order the appropriate national authorites directly to execute any of the foregoing powers.

N.B.: The Joint Shipping Board should be an international policy forming agency, with a small immediate staff of its own, while the great bulk of staff work and the execution of the Joint Board’s decisions should be done by the appropriate national agencies. The place of meeting of the Board would have to be determined by international negotiation, but it is suggested that much of the Board’s work could be carried on at the headquarters of the respective governments.

The Joint Shipping Board should be the place where the most important international problems of Naval strategy (convoys, etc.), of operations of merchant ships, and of the acquisition of strategic raw materials and implements of warfare are all reconciled and settled.

  1. For the evolution of this suggestion, known as the “Elliott-Marvin Plan”, see S. McKee Rosen, The Combined Boards of the Second World War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), pp. 82–92.↩
  2. Marvin’s proposals with regard to domestic controls are reflected in the chart printed as enclosure 1, p. 332. See also Rosen, pp. 82–91.↩