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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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have all the pieces come out at the same time. He was wonderful at that, but that's very different from the Council of National Defense. He could operate in an industry he knew. He knew bicycles and could make the transition from bicycles to automobiles. That was a proper transition. But he did not know how to effectuate broad, across the country planning, how, for instance, to get borax out of the mines in Arizona, which was one of the problems that nearly bowled him over at one period. He had never heard of how you get borax out and what the conditions of living are in the area where they get the borax.

I don't mean to say he wasn't a competent man, but this selection did not seem to me to be a selection of people who could do much. I remember thinking it over very carefully that night and probably talking it over very carefully with Charlie Wyzanski and Lubin, although I don't think anybody else in my department. I tried to figure out what was to be done.

Hillman was supposed to be running the labor end of it. The President hadn't said he was to, but the conclusion to be drawn by the emphasis given to the advisory commission was that between them they would do everything that the departments would have been ordinarily expected to do. I knew he





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