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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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recommendations with regard to wages and cost of living problems of wage earners, I was aware of farmers' problems, meat production problems, and such problems that would not have crossed my mind or come into my reckoning at all, or into the reckoning of anybody in my department.

There was another committee that met in the White House that had the three different farm organization heads on it. It had all the labor people on it. Jimmy Byrnes headed it up, and then Vinson. As each of them fell from grace, then somebody else took it over. That was the beginning of economic stabilization. The original committee was small, gave out no information, gave out no publicity, really informed itself, and really did come to some conclusion as to how each of us in our own sphere should behave. But when it became larger it became fancy dress. I never thought it was going to amount to a row of pins.

However, those were not the President's regular committees. At the beginning of this administration he made more committees than he did when the war began. Things were too serious then, and he had to hold the cards up close himself. There weren't many things you could delegate to people who didn't have superior information. He called in a lot of consultants that were never known and never mentioned by name after the war began.





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