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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 915

He said to me, “There must have been some report by the Secretary of Labor to the President of the United States at the time of the First World War.”

I looked perfectly blank and said, “I don't recall any such thing. Although I was alive and grown up at the time, I certainly wasn't here.”

So we set somebody to work in the files to see if it could be dug up. Charlie went to work independently, and he dug it up. I think he probably found it in the files of the Solicitor's offices, which had never gotten into the general files of the department. He found a copy of this report. In it they outlined what the people who worked on it had thought had been their best points, their weakest points, what they thought ought to be done in case of a later situation where an emergency board might have to be appointed.

Among other things, they regretted that they had not stuck to having a purely independent board, instead of one lapsing into tri-partisanship. Labor, employers and the public were supposed to be represented. The man who wrote the report pointed out that it slowed down their activities, that it had resulted in a kind of bargaining between people who didn't know anything about the situation. I remember





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