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

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

issue. What happened usually was that Knudsen and Hillman had no power to make rulings under any law, except that they had emergency powers to deal with individual cases. Some-body would approach them with regard to a case where perhaps the Wage and Hour Division had issued an order, a perfectly legal order to do something which was just like everybody else had to do in the same circumstances. Somebody would approach Knudsen or Hillman, not tell them the whole story, but show them how unreasonable it would be to expect them to do thus and so, and, of course, only knowing the one case, the would say, “Why yes, that is unreasonable. You may go ahead and do this.” The next thing we would find was that the field inspector would report that this, that or the other firm, to which he had issued an order two weeks earlier, when he went around to check up, had told him they didn't have to conform, that they had been told by the Office of Production Management that that was out for them.

Well, of course, one can see what consternation and confusion that works into a machine of enforcement. A machine of enforcement is quite efficient. It depends upon regularity, both for its competence and for its honesty. One of the greatest hazards you've got in any enforcement program is that individual inspectors, individual examiners, individual regional directors and supervisors, without meaning to be





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