Office of the Historian

Hopkins Papers

The Under Secretary of the Navy (Forrestal) to the Presidents Special Assistant (Hopkins)

Washington, 12 January 1942.

Memorandum to Mr. Hopkins:

I can’t too strongly endorse the general tenor of the suggested remarks for the President in Eberstadt’s memorandum on machine tools sent you by Bob Patterson.1

I have tried to impress on Max2 and everyone else who has been talking this over-all program that, if it is to be accomplished, it is absolutely necessary to double the 1941 machine tool output. And this, in turn, can only be accomplished by the most intensive use of machine-making facilities. Despite the heroic efforts of Bill Harrison I do not think this is now being done.

James Forrestal
  1. Not printed. The Patterson memorandum, dated January 10, 1942, (Hopkins Papers) had enclosed a statement drafted by Eberstadt, which the President might issue on the importance of increasing the output of machine tools.↩
  2. Lord Beaverbrook (William Maxwell Aitken).↩