[발췌] The National Resources Planning Board: A Chapter in American Planning Experience (1944)

지은이: Charles E. Merriam (Univ. of Chicago)

출처: The American Political Science Review, vol. 38, No. 6, December 1944

자료: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1949845

CF: National Resources Development Report for 1943: Message from the President of the United States (March 10, 1943)

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※ 발췌 (excerpts): 

In its 1933 report, President Hoover's Committee on Recent Social Trends suggested that there might in time emerge a "National Advisory Council" to consider fundamental questions of the social, economic, and governmental order, in their interrelation and in the light of the trends and possibilities of modern science.[1] This would involve neither "economic planning" nor "governmental planning" primarily, but a comprehensive consideration of all the social factors involved in the formation of national policy.

In July, 1933, the National Planning Board was set up by Administrator Ickes as a part of the Public Works Administration of that time. The membership consisted of Frederic A. Delano, chairman; Wesley C. Mitchell (Chairman of President Hoover's Committee above mentioned); and Charles E. Merriam (vice-chairman of the same committee).

In 1934, this agency was made a presidential board by executive order and was composed of the Secretary of the Interior as chairman, the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, the Federal Emergency Relief Administrator, and the three members of the old Board. An Advisory Committee consisting of Messrs. Delano, Mitchell, and Merriam were placed in active charge of the works.[2]

in 1939, the National Resources Planning Board was established by congressional action as a part of the Executive Office of the President, with three members Messrs. Delano, Merriam, and Yantis, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Messrs. Beardsley Ruml and Henry Dennison sat as advisers at all meetings of the Board, and Mr. Charles Eliot was director throughout the period. The Board was discontinued as of October 1, 1943.

Between the first report of the Board, curiously enough called the "Final Report," in 1934 and the "Resources Development" report of 1943 stretch a long series of intermediate reports, bulletins, digests, and memoranda, and technical papers.[3] The two reports mentionedㅡthe first sometimes called a "plan for planning" and the other a broad statement of a basic program of national planningㅡsum up the problems and difficulties of planning in the United States.[4]

Said the Borad in its 1934 report: "The experience of our day shows that no system, political or economic, unless it faces frankly the grave realities of modern economic and governmental life and boldly takes the initiative in broad plans for a better day, can be protected against explosion that wrecks and twists, while social discontent struggles to build some new structure promising more to the body and soul of those who feel themselves disinherited by the existing order of things." [5]

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