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Francis Perkins - Interview 96, side 2 - 9 May, 1955. This interview taken on a tape-recorder.
Cordell Hull telephoned me to say, “I was not able to make any headway with your item.”
“Oh,” I said, “Mr. Hull, I'm so sorry. I'm so disappointed.”
He said, “I think I gave it a very good airing. I kept notes on my conversation, and my notes show me that I raised this question nine times in the course of our conversations-- nine specific and different times, I raised the question of the I.D.O. And on nine specific times, I was given the brush-off on it. That is, they didn't say ‘yes' or ‘no' but they said ‘Let us postpone that,’ or ‘Let us take that up later,' or ‘Isn't that something to be taken up after we have done the principal things?' In other words, we were brushed off, and I do not know--but of course, you know as well as I do that their idea is that their labor unions should have the same voice as our labor unions, although they are really conducted by Government officers. We didn't even get to discussing that. They just wouldn't discuss the whole I.L.O. thing at all.”
He said, “I couldn't risk, of course, the rest of my mission by insisting on this, but I gave it a good airing.”
He said the same thing to me again when he met me at Cabinet meeting the next day, which of course was given over
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