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Labor Statistics by all kinds of Well-wishers. The appointment of Lubin happened sometime later, but I just told the President this day how I proposed to select that.

We also canvassed the problem of two other things. I was very insistent that the first and most pressing thing that we had to take care of - and since there was nobody else to help him with it, it had to be me - was some kind of a quick relief program. It would be all right to talk about public works. I was for them. I assumed he was for them. He talked about it during the campaign, although we had a bitter fight about it later. I felt that there must be some quick form of relief and it had to be done right a way or the country couldn't stand it. He was presumably coping with the banking problem, but something had to be put right into the stomachs and the hands of the people. He agreed. I had dozens of plans on my desk. He had dozens more. He said, “Go ahead and get together everything you can. Keep your eye on this and try and help develop something.”

So I did. I undertook to be the person in his Cabinet who would try to find people to develop a program of relief. It was my understanding that I was to be the person to help develop it, although not the person to do it. There was nobody else in the Cabinet who had any knowledge of that field, although everybody seemed to agree that we must have help.