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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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was an admirable piece of research work on the whole theory of the interstate compact. If all else had failed, I think we could have moved to that. I certainly would have tried to. It would have meant originally a compact between states that had relatively decent labor legislation. Then we would have had to rely upon competition to pull some of the others in, and propaganda, teaching, and so forth. However, that became unnecessary.

The NRA was the answer which men like Richberg, and Senator Wagner, who was a lawyer, and other lawyers who worked on it, and some people who were not lawyers but were very familiar with the decisions of the court, dreamed up. The NRA scheme of codes, proposed by the federal government, but accepted voluntarily by the total industry, or so much of the total industry as to leave the fringes of no particular consequence in the economy, pas regarded by most of the lawyers as being perhaps the answer to this problem. We wouldn't have to go barging ahead into a program of law to regulate wages and hours if this NRA scheme worked out well. And it started out to work out very well. At least, it appeared that it was going to work out well.

The Schechter case came down in May 1935 in which the language of the court was interpreted by the Attorney





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