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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that way.” He looked at me as though he thought I was crazy and that I hadn't understood what he said. He began all over to show me this system, the plan and the pattern. I said, “They won't stand there. They'll go hero and there. It just isn't possible. We've got other uses for our army.”

“I think you're entirely wrong,” he said. “People want to do what their government expects of them.”

Well, you have to agree to that. I don't think they do actually, but you couldn't say, “Oh no, the American people are full of lawlessness.”

At any rate, he conceived this War Manpower Commission idea and sold himself on it. I held it off for over a year, I guess. It had been talked about for a long, long time. I kept talking the President out of it. There was no need of it really. Some of the people in the army did like the idea. It satisfied this feeling that some people in military circles had that in time of war we should be totally mobilized, everybody, everything should be mobilized. I would always agree-- “Oh yes, I agree, but what is it going to take to mobilize them?” How do you mobilize them? How do you hold them? What dod you do with them after they get divided up into sections? The only way to run the country in wartime is to let people move and follow their own good sense, stopping them only when they do something that is either ridiculous for themselves, or against the public interest. At least, that was





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