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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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they had made automobile pistons. The gun makers of this country rose up in protest and said, “The damn things will explode on you. You can't do it. A gun barrel is a gun barrel. It's an art that has been perfected over thousands of years. Nobody else knows how to do it.” Kettering brought his engineers out and said, “Let me show you. How much internal pressure do you suppose there is on a piston of this type of motor?” The pressure exceeded anything that the gun manufacturers ever thought of. So General Motors said, “If we can do that, we can make a gun barrel, too.” So they did it. They never could have made a bazooka without the automobile industry, for instance.

The President saw that you had a lot of manufacturing potential in the United States, but that it was directed at producing articles of internal consumption for internal use and pleasure and utility. Whereas, what we had to do was to take that potential and utilize it all, directing it into entirely different directions, so that it all was turned into the making of the tools of war. That couldn't be done by any agency of government then existing. The President could only do it through his war powers. So I'm sure he had to have a production agency.

Now then, he, or Harry Hopkins, or both of them—Harry particularly—were unusually aware of what Harry regarded as





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