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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Hinrichs didn't want to fire her. He thought it was wrong to fire people who were competent. We had quite a discussion, quite a difficulty about it. By the next day we had drawn up the charges. We said nothing whatever about the kind of work she did. As a matter of fact, hardly anybody knew we did it. A few people in the Army and a few people in the Draft Board and a few people in the Bureau of Labor Statistics knew we were doing it. Nobody else knew that was the way it was done, that that was what the army used for its estimates. We just said she was working on important statistical material, I think. I charged her with incompetence, although that nearly killed Hinrichs. It was incompetence in that she showed poor judgment in her outside contacts and in her affiliation with political groups that had a basic underlying philosophy contrary to that of the government of the United States. She was therefore incompetent to do the work for which she had been employed. I gave her three days to answer the charges. Three days is about the limit. Sometimes they give them five. To fire a civil servant all you have to do is to specify what the charges for dismissal are and give them “opportunity to answer.” Those are the words of the law. They may answer in writing, not





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