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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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for the morning papers. It got little play, of course.

We also forget that the break up of the Defense Mediation Board had only happened the end of November and the first part of December, two or three weeks before that. It had been accompanied by very bitter, vituperative attacks by the labor men on the employers, and vice-versa, by both on the President, and by some of the labor men on some of the other labor men.

The bone of contention was the union security thing, the closed shop, but there were a lot of other accompanying differences of opinion. I still think that the original error was one which, although I didn't suggest it, I certainly didn't oppose as intelligently as I perhaps would do now. The original error was in having a tripartite board, which invariably leads to trouble. But people had been so intrigued by their experience on the NRA. They loved this meeting with each other, because it gave them a debating ground. The unions thought everything could be solved if they had a finger in it, and the employers thought that they could handle the union people. The exposed position of the public members hadn't been fully appreciated. The fact that both sides would hate the public members for different reasons hadn't been quite clear. The public members sometimes agreed with one side and sometimes with the other. I think a tripartite board, if you had it in a stable, settled industry, going on





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