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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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publicly critical of the Commission for not knowing what was going on in their factory inspection division, I was pretty insistent upon the commissioners themselves going and looking at some of the conditions that the factory inspectors uncovered and themselves holding a hearing when somebody appealed for a variation from the rule, for an exemption from the rule, or for the postponement of the taking effect of an order or something of that sort.

I think I was right in my criticism that they weren't doing much. They were passing on appeals in workmen's compensation cases, but they had not personally been digging into the problems. This Jerry O'Connor, who was the Moreland Commissioner, pointed out in his report. He sustained me in his report. When he finally made his report to the Governor, he sustained my original criticism and his recommendations were just along the lines I had indicated - the commission must divest itself of routines of who to appoint to this, that, and the other, and that kind of thing, and that it must take its own lead in matters of general policy, like hearing appeals from orders and themselves sitting on hearings. They should actually hear the cases or some part of them. They should let themselves be a court of appeals, but a court of appeals before whom the claimant who didn't think he had a proper





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