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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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fight fire there, but you start to spread that over the country and you are just in bedlam right away. So long as it's only to fight fires in our own township, that's all right. The fire warden can always get that up. But to think that you're going to spread it over the enormous population of the USA, and give everybody his right job is ridiculous.

In other words, the work will always be done by a proportion of the able bodied men and women and the others have just got to sit still and try not to make trouble. They've got to sit still, do their daily duty, and try not to make trouble for the others. If your poppa is out fighting the fire, the least you can do is to sit home and not let your own house catch fire. You sit home, be quiet, keep the fires down in-your house, feed the children, feed the neighbors, and so forth and so on, keeping the old horse rigged up in the surrey so that if you have to get out with the children you've got the way to do. What else can they do? You just can't organize it.

Anyhow, in the Department of Labor we had already discussed this matter of the draft of women. We knew it would be proposed. It was proposed and carried out in the First World War. The Woman's Bureau had competent, up-to-date information as to what the demand on the woman labor supply would be. They were ready with plenty of arguments, plenty





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