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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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with regard to these things. Everybody pretty nearly went along the lire loyally. I never knew that there was any particular pressure on Wickard to resign because these agencies had been taken away from him. I think that although people's plan were frustrated by this change from the idea of using the existing departments of government and letting them do the operating to the idea of a war administration, so far as I can recall everybody went along and said, “All right.” Even Jesse Jones went along and he was pretty sore about something that happened - I can't remember what it was. But he went along. Everybody went along.

So there was no reason why Wickard should be upset in the Cabinet that this had happened to him. The same thing was going on everywhere. These things were done against the advice of the Cabinet. The last great rumpus took place over the establishment of the War Manpower Commission, which I fought tooth and nail. I was so disturbed about it and was sure that it was going to be such a failure that I enlisted the assistance of Claude Wickard, Ickes, Jones and others. I even interested Frank Knox in it a little, although he said, “I don't know much about it, but I think it's kind of crazy.” There was a pretty general assault on the idea of having a War Manpower





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