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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I said, “Mr. Brownlow, how ridiculous. These things deal with working people. The Employment Service deals with working people. The working people expect the general supervision of their interests to be in the Labor Department, if there is to be any reason at all for such a department. I assure you this service will be put back in the department some other time if you take it out now. It's a terrible wrench to pull out of the department. It's all integrated with our statistical service, our law enforcement service, the special studies of women and Children's labor and occupations, with labor standards. They all mesh. We'd have to wrench it apart. They'd have to set up research and statistical divisions to service just the Employment Service.”

“They ought to have their own,” he said. “The more the merrier. We might learn something if there were more of them.”

That was a very lightheaded and lighthearted statement.

I said, “You know it'll come back. You must know that under the political pressure of the working people it will eventually come back to the Labor Department, or go to some other department.”

He said, “That's all right. You know, as a matter of fact, I think that we ought to move the various bureaus and divisions around every few years. Every five years they ought to be shifted.” One of his pet ideas was taking the public





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