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anywheres near the point where it was either wise or necessary to draft women or assign people to various jobs. But Smith was taken terrifically with the idea that you got everybody out, you had them write out all their talents and training and all their secondary talents, “unused potentials”, he used to call them, and that you then make a study of all that, and then you assign them.

I did say this in Cabinet meeting one day, and I remember it more or less amused the President and made it perfectly obvious--did you know what over happened to the great draft of men? the great register of men? It was buried in the basement and they never could do anything with it. Nobody could ever work on it, so it was just nothing. So if you take a census of women and their talents--but women won't stand that. They won't take that. They'll put up a fuss. “I registered. What am I going to do?” They'll be done at Headquarters every day asking for what their job is going to be, because they registered--two weeks have gone by now and nobody's sent for them to come on a War job.

Smith really got to Roosevelt with this thing, didn't he?

Oh, yes. He got to him very hard.

And Roosevelt felt it was fine to go along?