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think the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act was already through, or else it was being prepared. I, in my own mind, knew exactly how I was going to administer that, because that was a great delegation of authority to the Secretary of Labor.

So I talked with Hugh about the necessity of having public hearings - that he must not have these codes adopted and given final authority without a public hearing - a hearing to which anybody could come and at which anybody could make objections, or present facts or a different point of view, and suggest modifications. What gave these codes their only legal validity was the fact that an officer of the government agreed to, and gave sanction to, what these employers had already agreed upon. Before he did that he must be sure that he heard the public hearing, that he considered it, and that he made modifications if what came out in the public hearing seemed to him to be right, proper, sensible, and feasible.

That idea of public hearings seemed to Johnson perfectly crazy. I talked with him about it. He said, “I can't see it. I think this is crazy, Frances. Why, we'll spend all our time on public hearings.”

I said, “In the first place, it's wrong not to do it. We're operating a democracy here. You don't pass a bill in