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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Navy orders, for instance, had been given long before there was war in Europe. They would have a strike on the same operation, and the employer would plead that he couldn't pay more. We had some very difficult things. The Navy would rant around and tear its hair because they were being held up, the defense program was being held up. The strike had to be settled. Somebody had to make these people go back to work.

We studied the reports of other periods and other countries, and it seemed to be the best thing to do to suggest the appointment of a mediation board, which operated through the Department of Labor, utilized the Department of Labor, brigaded with us, or people brigading with them. That, of course, broke up in one grand row. That was just very shortly before Pearl Harbor that it blew up completely. People who had been on it resigned from it. That again, of course, illustrated my theory, which I now hold firmly, that you should never have a tripartite board, because the people who resigned were the employer members who had decided that the ruling which the majority of the board had adopted was unfair to employers. They began being restless and they resigned.





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