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With the passing out of the NRA following the court decision, the Senator pressed for the passage of this bill, and it became law on July 5, 1935. Senator Wagner was a very powerful and persuasive man in the Senate at that time.
I, myself, had very little sympathy with the bill and thought that it froze some of the more unfortunate practices of the NRA.
Senator Wagner introduced the bill in February 1935, and he reintroduced it making the National Labor Relations Board an independent agency. The Senator certainly thought that he'd solved the principal labor problems with that bill. He felt that it would be a natural popular success with the trade union men. It was not, however, an immediate success with them as an idea. Many of them had grave doubts about it - the same doubts that I had about it.
We had doubts, first, because it required a counting of the noses before the union could go in and see the boss and ask for a contract. That, of course, was something that no trade union man had ever done. So there was a great deal of doubt about it.
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