Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

Now, to this day, how shall I ever know?

Another great problem, and all of them did the same thing, was that the advisory commission began to bring down personal acquaintances. You can't stop a person from doing that. Anybody coming to Washington is certainly entitled to one or two purely personal friends whose loyalty and whose general point of view they have tested in other ways, people whom they know will think with them and will cover them if they make a mistake. Your friend alongside of you mustn't betray you. He must cover you and help you.

But Hillman began, under pressure, to put on more and more of his associates. Every time he put on someone who had been associated with the CIO you began to get rumbles from the AF of L for him to put on an AF of L man right away. Many of these men would have done better staying home running their unions. They knew how to run their union in Chicago, or South Carolina, or wherever it was their union was. They were perfectly competent as labor organizers, leaders and officers. They were pulled off their jobs there and brought to Washington. If they had stayed with their unions, I think it would have prevented lots of strikes and lots of troubles. They were pulled to Washington to plan, and they were no more planners than the baby in the street. They didn't know what you meant by planning an industrial program,





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help