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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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created great problems for the Department of Labor just by existing. They were not jurisdictional problems, because from the outset I definitely insisted that the Department of Labor was not going to be in a competing business with any agency of government. We would attempt to serve the new agencies of government, and so it was with the War Labor Board.

What I objected to really was that too many of our people were giving too much assistance to the War Labor Board - that is, they were spending too much time over it. The War Labor Board proceeded on the basis of having open hearings, which are very destructive of time and very wasteful of time. A great many people go to listen. There would be an excuse for some of our people in the Department of Labor to go up and sit in on thehearing, on the ground that they would learn something about what the War Labor Board was doing, or wanted. But they could spend half days, and then whole days, at that operation, with great damage to the basic work that they were supposed to be carrying on. So you had to keep constantly after the department not to hang around the hearings.

Also, the competition between the members of the War Labor Board, between the various labor members with each others, and the competition between the labor members and the employer members, and the competition of both of them against the public members, was so intense that they would attempt





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