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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that it was all right. I said, “Is this all right?” and he said, “Yes, this is all right.”

So I told people around me, “Yes, Wallace is going to be nominated.” But I didn't have any intimate talk with Hannegan. I knew Hannegan very slightly. I hardly knew him at all, and I'm sure he would have brushed me off if I'd asked him.

Interviewer:

Now, after the Convention, what do you know about this Jesse Jones business?

Perkins:

You mean with regard to the Secretary of Commerce? Well, I know quite a lot about that. There was an earlier conflict between Wallace and Jones, about the B.E.W. and I think other matters, but I never knew too much about that. It didn't strike me as being too different from the other struggles for power that were going on in Washington, you know. There was always some body who had an authority which he didn't logically ought to have and somebody else who wanted to take it away from him, and have it himself because he was the logical one to have it. That struggle over B.E.W. seemed to me to be almost the same. Now, why the Vice President should have been head of the B.E.W., I don't know, except that this particular Vice President, Wallace, wanted something to do. He wanted content to his job, and I think he had perhaps invented the idea of the B.E.W. and anyhow he'd





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