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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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doesn't necessarily understand the intricacies of the papermaking industry, which is very intricate, and which is an essential industry at most of these points.

In other words, that technique of tripartitism was overworked. It was very popular in academic circles, and I am told still is. If you question an academic, they'll always say it's wonderful. I had a slight hunch against it before this time, but I certainly during the war came to the conviction that it's no way to run a delicate situation. If you're in a situation where you've got to have a quasi-judicial decision, you had better have a board of three trustworthy public members - that is, members who have no connection whatever with any industry.

The Defense Labor Board couldn't agree in itself from the beginning. Later a great number of its members were appointed to the War Labor Board. There was a period when it was moribund. I have already said that I thought it was a quasi-political move rather than a sensible judicial and administrative procedure. It had never really been out of the Department of Labor. I, and other officers of the Department of Labor, seemed to be the people who had to do all the worrying about the War Labor Board, keeping it alive. The War Labor Board continued to operate in the Department of Labor. I always kept clearing out office space for them, although I didn't have actual control over them. I don't recall this part of its history well at all.





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