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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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in his Industrial Commission, but I was interested and concerned about the whole program. I thought it interesting and we worked on it together.

She thought up the name Reconstruction Commission. She said, “The word reconstruction is fine because it's non-partisan and it's non-controversial. It's harking back to the Civil War. The reconstruction period after the Civil War was a period that the Southerners regard with horror, because it was not planned. It was accidental. There was no policy. There was no thinking ahead as to how to meet these economic problems, social problems and even the political problems that were bound to arise. Now we've had this great war. In the State of New York we have people who are capable of planning. We've elected one of them to office. We can bring others in and we can have a planned reconstruction - a fine defense of it. It can be non-partisan. It can be non-controversial. Republicans as well as Democrats, men and women, young and old can all contribute to the planned reconstruction.”

We talked about many things. I called in Bernard Shientag, because he had been long one of my advisers. He was the Assistant Counsel of the Factory Investigating Commission and had been a very able fellow. He went into law on his own, but had remained very close to Smith. When





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