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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that it would have been better to leave to the regular agencies of government the war planning and war action. But the pattern isn't clear in every department.

It was different, for instance, in the Department of Commerce. They did many things they had never done before. Jones was still operating both the RFC and Commerce. By manipulating RFC he had enormous war responsibilities to finance firms that weren't then ready to take a war order, but could be if they had the money to make an expansion. He did a yeoman's job on that. He did some very fine things and acted very quickly. The Department of Commerce had never had any controls or real actions to perform in the field of commerce and industry. It had no action programs either for regulation, or for services. They actually per-formed no services.

Interior had some dealings with the war through fuel and water power control and throught the conservation of rare metals, such as uranium. Jones and Ickes also used to have clashes continually about the growing of rubber, artificial rubber, the experiments in the growing of natural rubber. I guess Ickes planted out some tung trees in Arizona, much against Jones's thoughts as to what ought to be done, because we already owned so much tung oil from China on a basis





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