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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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to trade unions. I still think he had none to trade unions as he had known them in the past, but he was somewhat startled at what he found going on when the organizing movement started among these automobile workers.

The General and I agreed on the chairman of the commission as being Leo Wolman, partly because he was the Chairman of the Labor Committee of the NRA and seemed to know what it was about, and partly because he was a quick worker. He could get things done. He could get over small differences and not spend weeks over a small point.

So that was the board that was set up after several weeks. They proceeded to Detroit and held hearings. They soon appointed deputies to assist them. They had to appoint examiners to look into the cases and analyze the cases as they came up. Although there are many people who look on the board as having been quite a flop, I do think that it served to stabilize the impulse for organization among the automobile workers, and by “stabilize,” I do not mean “suppress.” I mean that it stabilized and organized it so that it did not go off in different directions. The greatest hazard among them at the time was that there would be no unity whatever, that there would be a dozen different factions - not factions based upon an old trade like machinists, metal polishers and things like that,





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