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I had already told the President what we were doing in the Department of Labor. Somewhere or other I still have a little outline of what I talked to him about on one. particular day when I had gone to see him. I told him what the Department of Labor was up to and what we were doing in preparation, how we expected to fill our niche in the emergency.

After we had talked about it at Cabinet meeting, he said he thought it would be very wise to draw in other people outside the present government into the whole structure of the Council of National Defense. The he said this, which was a shock to most of us. We knew there was a war going on and that this was no time to take a vacation or improve your health. But he said, “Now, I realize that for your departments to be burdened with a lot of new projects all at once would be almost impossible. It would greatly impair and hinder the work of the department which is so important if a lot of new things are dumped onto it. It would be more than any of you individually could endure, or your departments could endure. It seems to me that we ought to have additional people.”

As soon as he began to say that to load the departments with new projects, which would be brought about because of an activation of defense programs. Would be bad, I began to think, “My goodness, what does he mean? What are the Departments for?”