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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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was going to say, “Let this thing ride and let it be settled case by case, and situation by situation. Let a gradually emerging policy by the new board develop. That board will be reconstituted, will have different members, and will have a broader organization of staff. It will be able to have a different approach to the situation and will perhaps be handled more judiciously. Also the fact of the war will have a great difference upon working men's insistence upon purely ornamental needs and it will certainly reduce greatly the likelihood that anybody's going to be fired from a job, because the need for men will be sufficient to protect them in their jobs.

I remember this conversation. The employers were the ones who were our problem at this point. I don't think I gave a good clear description of the breakdown in the Defense Mediation Board, which had been just terrible. I've never lived through anything worse. It was at the very time when John L. Lewis was having his great crisis with the captive coal mines, and with Benjamin Fairless of the steel company. These things all happened so close to the event of Pearl Harbor that in the public thinking, even in my thinking, I find that they were onscured by the terrible crisis that develpoed on December 7th. We don't realize that the settlement of the Lewis-Fairless dispute was announced, actually announced, on December 8th, the morning after Pearl Harbor. It had been settled, agreed to, and signed, and it was announced





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