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Notable New     Yorkers
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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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So I sat down by the telephone in my back office to try to get people to serve on this board. I spent day, after day, after day, long distance telephoning people all over the United States. I exhausted my list. I remember calling on Leo Wolman for suggestions. Leo Wolman was always the most productive and helpful of anybody I ever consulted. He knew what you meant when you said you had to find somebody who was a liberal, but not a fanatical or a notably pro-labor person, a person who was liberal and fair, who had some knowledge of the law and procedures of law. I had to have someone who while a liberal and not pro-employer and not an employer, still had some special knowledge of industrial machinery, how a factory is operated, how commercial propositions are carried out. There are professors who have dealt with these matters theoretically - economics professors, sociology professors - and some of them know a good deal.

So when I reached the end of my list, Leo turned up some more. He would give me names of people to telephone to. One of the people he suggested was, as I remember, Prof. E.W. Bakke of Yale. I tried to persuade him to come and take the chairmanship of it.

Bakke came down to see me and we almost had him. He





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