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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Anyhow, getting back to the Office of Production Management. I could have fought the OPM to retain everything myself, but I saw no reason to do that. So long as the Department of Labor was not broken up, not disintegrated, remained a unit and was asked to serve this other board and did, I was perfectly content. I decided that was the right role for us to play. The Department of Labor had larger appropriations than it had ever had. We did all, or most of the work that was done for this OPM, both on its analysis and fact-finding and on other matters. They took over in toto the standards of safety and the protections against poisons, gases and fumes and so on, that we had. Took them over and wrote them into their contracts. They took over our standards with regard to the one day of rest in seven. They looked to the Department of Labor for the interpretation and application of those standards. We worked them out. We called the necessary advisory committees to get an agreement with various unions and various employers' groups as to what they would agree was meant by the variations permitted in the one day of rest in seven. In some industries they had to work around the clock. The Department of Labor did that and handed it to them as a finished piece of goods. All they did was to write it into their contracts. So when the War Production Board, and the





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