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I don't know why Roosevelt bought all this. He was a poor administrator and I guess that's why he bought it. Harold Smith persisted and sold him the idea that you should set up a war operation. That was the only way you could get people concentrated on the war.

Byrnes went right along with it, but Byrnes has not got a good enough mind to invent a pattern of operation, I assure you. Byrnes has not got a very good mind. He's got a very poor mind. He couldn't have invented the kind of structure that emerged. That was Harold Smith and Harold Smith was a specialist on that. All these things that were in Agriculture that would impinge upon the war operations, it was Harold Smith's idea that you set them up in a separate war organization. He had the same thing for every activity. Every function of government that had to operate towards the war was to be lifted into a special war organization or some sort, war agencies. If the regular agencies of government thought they had any function whatever in that field, they were to put themselves in the role of information suppliers. I know that the setting up of this War Food Administration was all Harold Smith's plan. He specialized on that. He didn't care anything about the people involved. It was just his idea of the way to organize.