Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 731

We understood each other afterwards very well indeed. We cooperated a great deal. He was trying not to say, but it was the truth, that there was no order or system at all to it. Literally the place was run by Mr. Sayer and Jim Lynch. Whatever they could agree on was done. Embarrassing things were never brought to the calendar. Embarrassing things were things that were not just right, where there would be any controversy. In other words, the Commission hardly functioned at all, except that it put a rubber stamp on certain workmen's compensation settlements. It had to do that. The little bureaus all ran by themselves. The heads of the bureaus operated themselves.

The woman's bureau had been established in there. Miss Nelle Swartz was the head of that. I knew her and was very close to her. That was a little bureau and hardly supported at all by the Commission. The Commissioners hardly knew it was there. They didn't pay any attention to it at all.

The two great branches of the Commission were the Factory Inspection Division, which included mercantile inspection, and the workmen's compensation. As a matter of fact, workmen's compensation dominated the whole outfit. It was natural. It was interesting, and it's always more





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help