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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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We worked together very beautifully on that Commission.

I think the Governor just telephoned to me and said, “Of course you'll go back on the Commission.”

I said, “I surely will if you want me to.”

He apparently had it in his mind and didn't have any doubts about it.

He appointed a man named James A. Hamilton from the Bronx, a defeated candidate for the Assembly or Senate, who had been a school teacher, as the Industrial Commissioner. The Industrial Commissioner was supposed to be the executive and administrative officer. To this day I do not know what ailed Mr. Hamilton. He was intellectually unapproachable, mentally unapproachable. Whether he didn't have any mind, which I came to suspect, and therefore kept the place where it ought to be covered up so that we would not know it, or for some other reason, I don't know, but certainly he never mastered the details or the remotest part of what the labor law was, what the Labor Department was about, or what his functions were. He showed no interest in it. He used to make a lot of speeches - all very carefully written out. They were a regular schoolmaster's speech. He never would submit to any questioning. He made speeches to organizations that don't ask questions or answer back - that kind.

He sounded all right at first. When I read his vita





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