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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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perhaps make a better Secretary of Labor for him. Of course I said, “There are bound to be a good many strikes. That's what's going to come at the close of the War. I don't want to deceive you about that--whether I'm here or somebody else is here, there are going to be those strikes, and something has to be done, and unfortunately the habit has grown up of expecting the President to take a hand in it.” Now I do remember that I warned him particularly against taking a hand in strikes, and said, “I think that that was the great mistake that Roosevelt made toward the end of his life, and only after Byrnes began recommending that he take a hand in it. I think it's always inappropriate and always unwise for the President to do anything about a strike. Let it ride. If the time comes when those under him have managed a kind of a half reconciliation and have tested out to see if the President's intervention will bring a “yes” from one side and a “yes” from the other side, then all right. Then it has the glory, and de it. But that's only after all the negotiations have been done. Never any imponderables, never anything unsettled, when the President takes a hand in it, and that's only rarely.

I warned him against taking a hand in it, and I pointed out to him why Presidents mustn't and can't. They are the last authority and must not be invoked,





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