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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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We went into was in December 1941. By the first part of 1941, by January '41, we began discussing, either separately with the President, or in Cabinet meeting with the President, or both, accepting the possibilities and probabilities of the United States being involved in this war at some time, the method of operation, what great changes in government and in administration would have to come about. Some few of us had had a little experience in the administration of government during the First World War. I had had only the remotest connection, but I had been a part of the Public Employment Service of the First World War. I had also helped in the establishment of the Woman's Bureau in the Labor Department in the First World War, and in the kind of direction and planning of the factory inspections that they made under Newton Baker. I had had some advisory committee connection with that. There were two or three other people in the Cabinet who had some little connection - at least, they had vague remembrances of it.

That being the case there were certain things that we thought ought not to be done that had been done before. Barney Baruch had been down here in the First World War and had been head of the War Finance Corporation. That was also where Hugh Johnson first got his look-in. What





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