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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Then the 80th Congress came in, the Republican Congress, and they started right in to amend the Wagner Act. They amended it until it became the Taft-Hartley Act. At this time Reilly had become very disgusted by the whole operation. He felt that since it was possible administratively to make the rules and regulations that they had made, and to carry out the requirements of the act in the way in which it had been carried out by the Labor Relations Board, it was justifiable and necessary that the Labor Relations Act should be very drastically amended, that the law should be laid down particularly, and that the practices which had been in vogue should be prohibited. Reilly never collaborated or cooperated with Taft or Hartley, but he did with Senator Joe Ball of Minnesota - a very superior man, a Republican Independent of great intelligence. Reilly cooperated with him in the draft of a bill which would have changed the general methods of doing business of the Labor Relations Board. I can't remember the details of it.

The labor people grew very angry about this. The other members of the Board grew very angry about it. Reilly, who had thought that Houston would stand with him, was astonished to find that Houston proved to be a little more political than Reilly had expected - that





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