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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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people to various types or various parts of the War industry problem--not to let them choose what they wanted to do. He was particularly upset about women. That business of the draft for women, you see, was continually haunting him. We had so many women in this country who were not doing the kind of work that they could best do--not doing the job for which they were particularly measured.

“But,” I used to say to him, “they're doing the job which is near where they live, and therefore they can do it without too great upheaval of the whole community.”

He felt that was very wrong, and there should be a census of women and their abilities, and the women should be assigned to the work that they were best able to do. And of course, he worried terribly about these middle-aged women, the women from forty-five to sixty-five. He couldn't bear it, because very few of those were employed, you know. And it's true that they're past the child bearing and child caring age, and if they did anything, they rolled bandages at the Red Cross. I mean, it was that sort of thing.

You can't get that sort of person out. You must make all the efforts you can to give them an opportunity, but they aren't very well adapted to industrial work, when it comes right down to it. We never hit the point where we were really short of people in industrial work. We hadn't come





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