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Frances Perkins - Interview 98, side 2 - 12 May, 1955 - This interview taken on a tape-recorder.

He had told me, when he came back, of the way in which the employers had tried to caucus, and Henry Harriman told me, too. It was a great surprise to the American employer delegates when they went to their first meeting. Mr. Oersted, a Dane, had held the post of a kind of a permanent secretary of the employers' delegation to the I.L.O. He lived in Geneva, and the employers, the European employers and others, had contributed to his salary and maintained him there to keep an eye on things. That was a peculiar thing to do, but they had invented that, and as a matter of fact, there was a resident secretary of the workers delegations who had been selected. That man usually changed frequently. There's much more representation now of workers and employers and of Governments who stay in Geneva and sort of work along with the staff and keep their eye on things, because it's a more active organization.

But Oersted had started this thing originally. He was a Dane, a middle-aged man--pretty gruff, pretty unintersted in much progressive legislation. He thought better have not too much, and he always opposed everything. He saw it as his mission to oppose liberalization of the codes--although that isn't the purpose of the I.L.O., and it