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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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the families of soldiers who were in the jug for some improper conduct. Neither did you want them writing letters overseas, which was another one of the jobs that devolved upon this Council of Women.

In other words, this Council of Women was a council of organizations and the organizations vouched for the reliability and trustworthiness of the people who were sent. They didn't vouch for their skill. We determined their skill from a separate set of questions based upon their background, training, and so forth. That's how I knew we would always have more people than we could utilize.

The same thing was true of those who went into socalled war work on a paid basis - that is, factory war work, taking men's places on streetcars and things like that. That all went on during the First World war too. There was never any difficulty in recruiting them. You just said, “Here are the jobs. This is what the work is. This is what the pay is.” They came. They were lined up through the employment office of whatever company wanted them. Certainly the best possible way of doing it was to let the companies themselves hire them. They had their own people skilled in selection, and then they were responsible, and no great public agency was.

Anyhow, the talk about drafting women began right away. Of course, the talk about registering every man began at once. You couldn't stop that. That was done. I did manage to stop





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