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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I don't know whether Wickard understood that or not. About all I can say is that he certainly wanted to be accomodating on a personal level and on an official level. He was very cooperative, as far as I could see.

Of course, my lines never ran afoul of his. I don't think there was any point at which the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Labor came into contact except this one matter of the recruiting of labor from Mexico and the Barbados and other places during the war for extra labor in the United States, and whether that should be done in the Department of Labor or the Department of Agriculture. That was something where we did run into each other, but Wickard and I agreed to agree on that in a very few sentences. We instructed our people who did the negotiations to get along. So far as I can make out they always did. The bureau that we set up to recruit these people did all right. The Department of Labor set the standards under which they should be hired in consultation with the Department of Agriculture so that we couldn't get the wages and working conditions all out of line with what farmers can and must do. Wickard and I had brief conferences over that, but they were brief because we agreed so quickly. The detailed negotiations were left





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