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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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be spectacular and instantaneous. I remember saying, “Well, I certainly won't fight that. It may be a good idea if anybody has the nerve to try it.” I thought it very reactionary. I thought it an extraordinary thing to try in American life - setting aside the anti-trust acts, permitting agreements, fixing of quotas of employments, fixing of sales practices. I began to realize that all those were coming into the pattern, as well as the fixing of all kinds of marketing conditions, dividing of the markets, all that sort of thing, which was practically price-fixing as well as wage and hourfixing.

So I staked out for myself the duty of seeing that we got a public works program. I talked to Ickes for strength, I suppose. I wanted a true public works program - not a made works program - where large sums of money are appropriated for public works, which are constructed under government auspices, or government contracts. They were things like dams, roads, buildings, schools, and so on. We didn't foresee everything that would be in the public works. All this became Title II of NRA eventually.

I conceived it to be my duty to see that this public works program got in. I wanted to see that public works was not lost in the enthusiasm for what I still regarded as a somewhat exotic and thoroughly experimental scheme, never





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