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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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only way I can keep control of a meeting. I mean, you sit back in your chair and the conversation goes on; you recognize somebody; you don't know what's going on. I lose track of it, and I also lose the chance, which is very important, I think, in a meeting, to see the gleam of intelligence and the gleam of an idea in somebody's face. He won't batter his way to speak, but you see that he looks as if he had an idea, and you ask him. You see, you lose that if you're sitting down. You don't see that expression. I can do a great deal better, and bring out from the group the real ideas, the ideas that are formed on the spot out of the material that is being reported to them. So I do that. I stood up most of the time. Of course I had periods of sitting down. When somebody was making a long explanation and using a blackboard and some charts, I would sit down to look at that and to get myself a rest.

Then, I could always ask the vice-chairman--you see, there were two vice-chairman, the French employer delegate and the Netherlands working delegate were the vice-chairmen of the Committee--and I could always ask wither one of them to take over and preside for longer or shorter periods, and I did. Sometimes I went away for an entire day, because it's good from to do that. In Geneva a chairman who doesn't ever let the vice-chairmen preside is regarded as very hoggish, really, you know--trying to run things himself.





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