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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Well, the WPB relationship to the War Labor Board was not of any great intensity. The War Production Board had its own program and projects to carry out and it didn't pay much attention to any other agencies. They were the super-agency, after all, so far as leadership in the production of the sinews of war was concerned. They went ahead with it. If there was a strike or a labor dispute that was holding up production, we heard from them, but I was the one who heard from them. The Labor Department heard from them first. Naturally, if I heard of it, the War Labor Board heard of it, but the case didn't go over to the War Labor Board as a case except when it was sent by the Department of Labor. Naturally, I wasn't holding back on sending them anything, if it was a suitable and proper case.

But a lot of the things that held up production were reported to the War Production Board by amateurs, shall we say, who were working for the navy, or for the army supply service, or for the War Production Board itself, and knew little or nothing really about labor matters. The navy and the army supply corps had taken on a lot of people, and the purpose and intention of their action was good. Looking at it on paper it looked fine. The army gave the order. The army had people out all the time fostering production. They gave the order to a particular firm to produce so many thousand bolts of a particular kind, or so many engines of a particular kind. The army had a man right on the spot who represented the





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