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Also, people would go over to the Hillman-Knudsen outfit to get not only their strikes, but their hours and wages troubles, and so forth, untangled. It made a good many of our people sort of mad. Although somewhat disturbed by it at times, I think I reconciled myself to it rather easily on the ground that a lot of queer things were going to be done anyhow and perhaps it was not too bad to have them done outside the regular departments. I didn't want the Department of Labor making any such agreements, or having the right to make any such agreements.
It may be that Roosevelt had anticipated just this when he set up this system of administration. He was a very worldly-wise and a very human being-wise person. At any rate, it seemed to me that I would be a very poor sport to fuss about just who had the authority to do this and that, where the lines of authority lay. It struck me that the best thing that I could do, and I thought this really ought to apply to other Cabinet officers, was to fit the regular operations of government in just as well as you could, let go as little as possible, keep the best things being done, keep a supervising eye without supervising authority even upon the enterprises that were going, to be sure that they didn't get out of hand without anybody's
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