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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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for the period of the war the principal function of regulating the entrance of immigrants, non-citizens, into the country, and of providing for the deportation of others, would have to be judged from the point of view of its effect on the war situation and upon the security and safety of this nation from spies, plotters, and so forth and so on.

Of course, one Mustn't forget the Black Tom explosion which had occurred during the First World War. It was the action of German spies, saboteurs. It had left a great impression on anybody who knew anything about it. Of course, on the Department of Justice because they had been making all these investigations.

Jack McCloy had just come down to join the government rather recently and he had been the principal legal investigator of the Black Tom explosions, hadknown the whole story and had produced the evidence upon which the finding had been made. If I'm not mistaken the findings of what had been the cause and who had been the guilty parties in the Black Tom explosion, had only been published in 1933 or 1934, since the New Deal came in. The investigation had been going on all the time. If it was before that time, it was just before. In other words, it was fresh in the memories of people in the Department of Justice.

So the question of are there saboteurs, how did they get here, and what do you do with them when you get them





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