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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Senatorial assistant. He was a very great brain trust, an awfully good thinker, planner, and lawyer. There was Rifkind, Jacobstein, another man and Wagner. Wagner, of course, was never a thinking machine. He couldn't have thought this out, but he was giving his political judgment to it, was interested in it, and the others were doing the tough thinking and planning.

Lubin knew about it, because he'd been called into the group. He didn't know for what purpose exactly, but he'd been called in to give some information about economic problems. I think I appointed Lubin as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics around April 1933, about a month after I came into office. I had that on my mind as a problem. Ethelbert Stewart, who had been head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for many years, had resigned before we came in. He had resigned in protest at Hoover. So the place was vacant. I was very glad to know that, because, although he was an honest man, he was not a competent statistician or economist. He's had almost no training. He was self-taught. His heart was in the right place, but the situation was too complicated for that.

I made up my mind that we would handle this bureau as a technical or professional matter. The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is appointed by the President





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