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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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analysis and research methods, which was already under good control. That was what made it possible for us to provide not only the Selective Service with a call-up principle and pattern, but it made it possible for us to supply the manufacturing enterprises with a knowledge of just how many men they would need. We figured out, for instance, how many man hours of labor it would take to provide for the expansion of, we'll say, a heavy industry operation which was now going to be turned into a war supplies operation, whether that was done in making supplies for the British and the French, or whether it was to be done later on in making supplies for ourselves. We began to do that so early that the men and women who operated that bureau had begun to think in terms of what they would need to know in order to operate that, and then set their trained imagination to work.

We had already mastered the technique of amassing those figures. We knew how to do that. But just adding to that a little bit, or varying it somewhat, or extending it further than it had extended before, we were able to get together the information that would be needed. It was a very intelligent job. I think that Isador Lubin, the head of the bureau, and Ford Hinrichs, who was the number two man there and afterwards succeeded Lubin, were principally responsible





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