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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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more and more colored people had to be trained. They had the opportunity to be trained for the first time. Then, of course, the unions insisted upon the same wage for everybody.

Getting back to the War Manpower Commission and its effect on the Labor Department. It wasn't too complicated an operation to integrate our service with theirs. There was no physical moving around possible in those days so the Employment Service, for instance, couldn't be physically moved over to the Manpower Commission. If anybody had an office or a desk he just jolly well had to stay right at it. You couldn't move things into some ideal arrangement. So for the most part these offices of the Employment Services all over the country stayed where they always had been. The local operation in Washington stayed pretty nearly where it had been but it was done under a different set of regulations, and much more regulation than had been the custom with the old Employment Service.

I can't say that we did exactly as we would have done if the Manpower Commission hadn't been set up, but still I never felt, curiously, as though these functions of mine had really been taken away. I always felt responsible for the Employment Service, and to a very large extent they still felt beholden to me. Of course, it was greatly expanded and a lot of new people came in, but the basic people in the Employment





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