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the Cabinet.

Getting to this business of talking the action agencies away from the Department of Agriculture and putting them under war Food, Byrnes talked Roosevelt into doing that, or so I'm told. Harold Smith talked Byrnes into it. Harold Smith had nothing against Wickard. Harold Smith was a profound believer in setting up a special war operation and taking out of all the regular departments everything that related to the war. They ruined the Department of Commerce. They took it all to pieces and the work that the Department of Commerce had been doing was being done in the National Production Board, or some such darn thing as that. The Knudsen-Hillman scheme was the craziest scheme of operation that ever was and that was devised by Harold Smith. I practically know that he devised War Food. He devised all of these. He wasn't heard very loud either, because he didn't come to Cabinet meetings and none of us knew how he was operating until we begun to see the results of it. I was quite a friend of Harold Smith's too, so I perhaps knew more of what he was thinking about. He wa responsible for out having a War Manpower Commission - another crazy idea, absolutely unnecessary. It mad more trouble than it was worth.





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