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Interview 81 with Miss Frances Perkins by Mr. Dean Albertson at 2127 LeRoy Place NW, Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, 7 April, 1954. This interview taken on a tape-recorder.

Now getting on with the advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. The council was set up in accordance with a law left over from World War I, and some of its composition was recorded in that law. The Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy and certain other fixed officers of the government were to be on it. Pretty nearly every Cabinet officer was mentioned to be on it, with some Presidential appointees. That had been strictly in abeyance. There was no such thing in actual functioning. But the law had never been repealed and was there.

Before going into the Council of National Defense and its Advisory Commission in the spring of 1940, I think I ought to say that certainly from September 1939 on and probably from the previous spring when it became obvious to some of us in the know that the world was moving in a situation that might lead to war, I had made plans to meet the war situation in my department, and I think it likely from what I have heard from others that they did so too. That was at