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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I do think that the people who went over from the department, like Tracy, Hinrichs and Lubin, felt, as I did, that it ought to have been done in the Department of Labor. You ask whether I think that Hillman had visions of making his operation the only one. I mustn't say, because I don't know what Hillman thought in his own mind. In the times when I conferred with Hillman about these matters it seemed to me that he was dreaming very large dreams, that he was thinking of himself as the final authority in all kinds of things, thinking of himself as a greater authority than any public official ought to think. He wasn't even thinking of the necessity for obeying the law. Over and over again we had to have that out with him. “You can't do it, Hillman. The law says so-and-so and neither you nor anybody else has this authority. You can't do it.” Hillman would have been in trouble if he had gone on very long in this thing. He was making unrecorded agreements—“You do this, and I'll see that you get a big order.”

There was a strike on the West Coast. We had people out there and were doing our best. He wanted to settle it a certain way. He wanted to please the labor people. He wanted to be the number one man in the labor movement. He wanted to supplant William Green, John L. Lewis, Philip Murray





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