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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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was advising me. I've forgotten who it was now, but I was taking advice outside of our own Labor Department lawyers with regard to this matter of what the powers of the state, what the powers of the federal government were.

Now Garner must have hit the ceiling, as he did, as a result of a conversation in Cabinet meeting. Garner made a statement to the newspapers in early '37 concerning the strike. That must have been after a Cabinet meeting in which Garner had raised the question. “What is it these fellows are doing out there anyhow, Mr. President? This is terrible. This sit-down strike is just terrible. What's the state of it?”

The President turned to me and said, “You sum it up.”

So I stated what the state of the situation was, when they had sat down, who they were, what their relations to their employers were, what the matters at issue were; that they, instead of leaving the factory, had chosen to stay in the factory and to make their demands, that they had expected to be dealt with immediately on their grievances, that the employers had refused to deal with them and therefore they had continued to stay.

I saw Garner getting red in the face when I said that the employers had refused to agree to meet them and





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