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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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To this day I haven't any idea what the plans of the Department of Agriculture are for the next war, but surely they should have some. I presume that what will happen in the next war, and I'm sure that Wickard was moving toward this, is a total service with assignment. Therewill be universal service, for military, for agriculture and for industry. I don't like that. That is about as destructive of our conception of a free society as possible.

In the end we did come to job freezing, but of course there were always lots of ways out of that, and there would have to be. In order to have the thing work at all you have to have some kind of mitigation, some method by which people can be excused from a job assignment.

Of course, the waves offered for farm labor can never be what they are for other kinds of labor. That's impossible. I realize that. I'm free to say that as far as I was concerned, although I sympathized with Wickard's problem, I never took any part in helping it. I still think that's the way you have to operate. Each person has to do those things that are primarily his to do. If you stop and have committee meetings, and if the people who know about labor, or about machinery, or about the practise of medicine, try to give advice to the Department of Agrilcuture, you're sunk.

Getting back to organization, the War Labor Board





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