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

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

going to do it, well then the money ought to go to them and not to you. So it brought about a situation where I had to talk to him. I talked to David Stowe, who was over there in the Bureau of the Budget. He was a subordinate, but he was the man assigned to work the year round on the Labor Department budget. He was supposed to know what we were up to.

Harold Smith was very disturbed about this dual organization which he saw. I remember his saying to me, “It isn't only in the labor field that this dual organization exists. It's in other parts of the operation.”

Of course, I became more and more aware of all this, and possibly reconciled to it on the ground that an extraordinary organization, outside of the Cabinet, could be kicked out, could be abandoned at any time and not create too much public disturbance, and also that it was probably a way by which the President believed that he was keeping everything in every area of the defense effort under control. He would know what was going on, and it wouldn't get into the hands of just routine bureaucracy. I think that might have been involved in his thinking, but he couldn't keep up with it. He might think he was coping with it and keeping it under control, but what Hillman, on Knudsen, or Chester Davis told him wasn't the whole story. He still had to see





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