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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Wickard was pleasant. He needed to know. I was the easiest to ask to post him on how this that was being talked about now connected with something that was being referred to as of an earlier date. I got on to terms of liking him very much.

During the campaign of 1940 I was out campaigning a good deal and so was everybody. Cabinet meetings were sketchy. So this whole period is a bit hectic. Anyway, I got to know and like Wickard.

Moving on, in 1943 War Food Administration was set up and Chester Davis was made head of it. Then the action agencies were taken out from under Wickard. That happened in every department. It happened to me. It happened in Labor, in Interior, in Commerce, everywhere. That was what the war Cabinet amounted to. That was called the big Cabinet. Roosevelt would get tired of it and would finally only say, “Only the little Cabinet will meet today.” That was the Cabinet as originally constituted.

Anyhow, Wickard did get a bad deal on that. He probably got it worse than anybody else. It was one of the things that I didn't understand too much about, because I didn't know where food left off and agriculture began.





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