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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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development of a number of people. The actual work on the War Labor Board developed a number of people who, before they'd been on the War Labor Board, certainly couldn't have been called even beginning experts, or beginning practitioners of the art of labor relations, but there have been a great many opportunities for them to learn something since. Men of preliminary education have gone into these various agencies and have learned something, and have become pretty good. But actually, from 1941 to 1945, there were only a handful of people in the whole country who were competent to give an opinion as towhat ought to be done in a particular situation.

The ones who were hired by the army and navy were just about the same as these people who came into the Budget Bureau, and came into Byrnes' office. They were intelligent, well-educated young men, sometimes lawyers, sometimes economists, sometimes newspaper men. They were reasonably well-educated, alert, and looking around to see what could be learned. They didn't necessarily have any pro-labor bent, but they had become aware of the fact that if you wanted to get production out, you couldn't have a lot of stoppages, and that stoppages arose out of grievances of labor. Therefore, you had to find out what the grievances were and remove the grievances insofar as that was possible.

Naturally, that group held firmly to the view that if you were the bright young man who discovered the grievance





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