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If it was true that I was going to be a member of the Industrial Commission, it would have been theoretically an advantage to him to have made a friend of me in advance.

Louis Havens was associate head of the Bureau of Factory Inspection in the New York State Department of Labor. I had known him in the years when I was working with the Factory Investigating Commission. We were making inspections and investigations. I was on close terms with some of these people in the Department of Labor because they would tell us where to go and would often send an inspector to go with us. I saw Havens all the time. He was a man of very good judgment about what ought to be done, but was pretty radical in his ideas of what ought to be done in his fields. He was very, very mild with everything else. He was a Republican, but with regard to cleaning up factories he wanted done right.

He came running up to see me in the Maternity Center office. I think he burst into the office saying that he wanted to see me. I was glad to see him. He said, “I came because I want to be the first to congratulate you.” This must have been within the first week of Al Smith's term, or I'm not even sure that it wasn't between his election and inauguration.

I said, “What do you mean, Mr. Havens?”