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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Schechter decision came down. It's my opinion that if Jackson had been around in an important post that I would have consulted him. In my book, The Roosevelt I Knew, on page 252, I refer to this conference.

What I'm trying to establish, at any rate, by all this is that the ideas were not in general circulation, but that there were points of irritation. The question of what the court would do in ever so many kinds of situations was under constant discussion. Earlier Roosevelt had said to me that we needed some changes in the Court, and this Court went on. I give some brief hint of all this in my book, but I did not go into it because there were so many things with regard to the genesis of the Court fight that I only knew either by inference, or knew partially at the time I wrote the book. I did not know, what Harold Stephens later told me, that Cummings had been for some time - at least a year - working very privately and very closely on a variety of plans for changes in the Supreme Court.

When the Schechter case came down in May of '35 and the decision was against us, there was great excitement in Washington government circles about it. There was a disposition to say that all was lost. It happens not to be my temperament and disposition ever to say that





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