Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

Anyhow that was that. Wagner was a very popular Senator. The other members of the Senate Labor Committee were inclined to believe that he was right, that the Labor Department was pro-labor, and that the public would think so. So the independent agency was all right and they voted to have an independent agency. It was established by an act of Congress on June 27, 1935 (79th Congress). The President did not veto it. He signed the bill on July 5, 1935.

In signing the bill, the President said to me, “Now, I want you to keep very close to this (another one of these things he wanted me to keep close to). Keep me in touch with it, because otherwise nobody will know what this outfit is doing, unless the Secretary of Labor establishes a liaison with them.”

I remember saying, “All right, I'm glad to do it. In fact, I think I ought to, but you'll have to write a letter to the new members when you get them appointed to say that I'm to do that. I will make it a point of being a liaison and of getting from them a weekly report, and a monthly report - getting the idea established they have to report to you through me what they're doing.”





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help