811.20 Defense (M) Brazil/5016
The Under Secretary of State (Welles) to the Ambassador in Brazil (Caffery)
Dear Jeff: Many thanks for your letter No. 61 of July 23, 1943, on the subject of the difficulties which surround the mica procurement program. I gather that the various agencies in Washington interested in mica procurement are very conscious of how hard it will be to achieve the tonnage objectives which have been set. I am afraid that if we were to attempt to work out your suggestion for purchasing directly from the miners, it would mean sending a still greater number of Americans into the field. The problems of quality of mica being so intricate, I doubt whether the agency responsible for the disbursing of funds would be willing to delegate their disbursing powers to Brazilians.
In any case, the picture as it appears at this end at present is as follows: Arthur Paul, who, as you know, made a special trip to Brazil for the Office of Economic Warfare in an attempt to pull together the Office of Economic Warfare procurement program there, made a report at the July 15 meeting of the Combined Raw Materials Board. I am enclosing herewith a copy of this report20 which deals with mica, quartz, and tantalite, which will doubtless be of interest to you. His main thesis was that there had been so many changes made in the program at such close intervals that he thought, even if the present set-up was not as good as it should be, it was better to let the program now run along for some time without making any major changes in prices or methods of procurement. Those attending the Combined Raw Materials Board meeting, interested in procurement work, appeared to concur in this view. Probably, therefore, the best thing to do is to see how the program does work out for the next few months.
Believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
- Not printed.↩