Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

Frances Perkins - Interview 100, side 2-23 May, 1955-2127 LeRoy Place N.W., Washington, D.C. This interview taken on a tape-recorder.

Interviewer:

How did Paul V. McNutt happen to become head of the Social Security set-up?

Perkins:

What was he before?

Interviewer:

Governor of Indiana, then he went to the Phillipines, and about '42 he became head of War Manpower Commission.

Perkins:

Oh, it was the War Manpower Commission. At any rate, how did he happen to become head of the War Manpower Commission is the question. How did there happen to be a War Manpower Commission? That was one of the most fantastic episodes I ever saw, and it was noted in a fantastic organization.

Harold Smith, who was the Director of the Budget, was one of the earliest to appear on the scene of people who were concerned with the reorganization of the Government to make it more efficient. When the War was getting well under way, he got very much wrought up over what he called the more or less uncontrolled use of manpower--whatever manpower is--but he conceived it in terms of human beings who were doing different jobs not in the Government but in the United States generally. We already had the draft,





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help