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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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recommend it, but he did this very quietly, because he wished not to offend the members of the Supreme Court by indicating that he had anything against any of them or that he desired the retirement of anyone.

1936 was also an election year and there was some talk that the court should be made an election issue in the campaign. During that time also the Guffey Coal Act case was handed down by the court, and decided against the government, but anybody could see that it was unconstitutional. I was no lawyer, but I could see it was crazy. At any rate, an extraordinary amount of Senators voted for it for no reason that I could ever made out. After the Schechter case, the Triple-A case and the Guffey Coal case, Cummings, in my presence and in the presence of two or three other people, was saying that we just had to go to the people on this issue, because the Supreme Court was exceeding its powers, was attempting to run the country, to determine the policies, and the President had been elected to do good to the people and was trying to do good to the people, but the Supreme Court wouldn't let him.

This wasn't used as an issue during the campaign, as it turned out, but it was certainly discussed and urged. I remember Farley saying something about it.





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