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supply of elderly ladies, from 45 to 60, with nothing to do, playing bridge. Nobody would hire them. And actually they didn't want to be hired for anything. When they said they wanted to do war work, they didn't actually want to work in a dyeing establishment. They would work for the Red Cross, but there wasn't enough work there.

So when the war broke out we had a number of projects in view. This afternoon of December 8th all hands agreed that everything that had to do with any labor matters, either in the recruitment, or mobilization, or distribution, wage-fixing, hours, variations, employment of women, employment of children, employment of the aged, employment of the functionally inadequate, should be handled through the Labor Department. The Labor Department should be the principal spearhead.

I suppose that every department in the government decided that same thing for itself. As one looks back on it, and thinks of the planning for another set of hostilities, one still realizes that is the cheapest, and probably most competent way to accomplish what has to be accomplished by government in wartime - to utilize the existing agencies and activities of government, and to utilize them as the total. You can add to them in numbers, in money, in functions, if new functions need to be added, but brigade the new functions in with the old ones so that they can be competently held in