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government has paid little or no attention to the recommendations of the previous boards on this subject, but the status of world affairs today and our deplorable experience in the World War should make it desirable that president Roosevelt, the Congress, and the Secretaries of War and Navy give thought and action toward making the recommendations of the Baker board a reality. Today, the aircraft manufacturers who have been supplying our Army and Navy, are in general in need of business. Our manufacturers, who have done the experimental work and created the best types of pursuit and bombardment airplanes known anywhere in the world, have each been forced to do so at financial losses. These American manufacturers, who have been successful in obtaining contracts to build military airplanes for our Army and Navy, have been forced to do so at financial losses. Uncle Sam is our business man's worst customer. 
The Baker board recommended that America pay a fair price for experimental work, defray the proper cost of making such changes and alterations as the government may order from time to time in its aeronautical equipment, and that the manufacturers be paid a sales price that will not cause the manufacturer a loss. It is to be noted that the Baker board did not recommend that the United States allow aircraft manufacturers to make a legitimate profit. Each member of the Baker board believed that the aircraft industry, like all other industries, is entitled to make a fair profit, but each member of the Baker board likewise knew that the tenor of our government was and is such that it would be unwise, if the board's report was to have any effectiveness at all, to recommend that manufacturers be entitled to a fair profit upon what Uncle Sam purchases. The board simply suggested that we need a live and healthy aircraft industry when the next war breaks out. If we are not to have delays similar to those in the World War and at the cost of many hundreds of millions of wasted dollars at the outbreak of the next war, we must have a healthy aircraft industry operating on a profitable basis when the tragedy of the next war shall overtake us.