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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Following the President's direction to me that I should keep in touch with this board and act as liaison between him and the Board, I set up with Mr. Madden's agreement a regular system of bi-monthly reporting by the Board to the President via the Secretary of Labor. Also I tried to talk with the members frequently and keep some knowledge of what they were doing and thinking. Here I learned how easy it is for an Independent Agency to become truly independent and outside of governmental policies.

In answer to your question as to when Nat Witt entered the NLRB, I believe it was during the time when the NLB existed in the NRA. He was in a quite subordinate job. I know that he was already there inside the machinery of the board under Lloyd Garrison and Francis Biddle. I had hardly heard of him previous to this time. How he got in and when he got in, I don't know, but Nat Witt was working there in a subordinate position.

I began to try to assert what the President had asked me to do, and what he had reiterated - that I was the liaison officer for the President. He wrote a letter to Madden in which he said that because he wanted to keep track of the National Labor Relations





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