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But these early committees were different. For instance, Harold Smith was brought into a Cabinet committee to discuss reorganizing the government. That was a reasonable thing to do. The President saved a row by appointing certain members of the Cabinet to be on an advisory committee to Smith who had the major responsibility in the matter. It gave the man who was acting for reorganization the advantage of knowing what the Cabinet officers would object to. The time the President didn't do that was when they were reorganizing it before Smith came down, during the time of Louis Brownlow's committee. Brownlow's committee acted in a kind of mist of secrecy. A good many Cabinet members got good and mad when they realized that Brownlow and his assistants were ferreting in their departments without telling them anything about it. I think the President had to resolve that eventually. He accepted Brownlow's report, but he could never get much head-way or progress on it.
Smith later on undoubtedly utilized some of those studies, but he was in full rapport against some of Brownlow's ideas. Nobody, so far as I know, but the President ever saw the report. Brownlow and Merriam would come to see you. They would greet you in this lovely, charming, Rockefeller Foundation, “all one band of brothers” atmosphere, the same atmosphere that prevails in the editorial rooms of Life Magazine
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