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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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but he can't work at it. He can't keep his mind on it. It's only the people you hire and pay who will stay with you through thick and thin, and be there at midnight to get your dispatches and see that they're put into operation the next morning. So it still turned out to be the people who s at next to these people, these volunteers, “dollar a year” men--the people who sat next to them and did the thinking and the planning were the local Employment Office people, who were the only ones who could do the thing and who had to get it done. It meant that it went through several steps before they got it--that was all; and that a lot of policies were adopted.

As it turned out, this War Manpower Commission made policy. McNutt would keep saying, “Well, we are here to make policy,” To make policy without having any conception of what its performance would be, and having no reponsibility for its performance--that seemed to be acceptable to him, I remember. It was a very great shock to me. Hershey agreed with me on this. You can't make policy anless you also make performance--I mean, you can't separate the two things. It's ridiculous.

Interviewer:

Do you have some opinions about how this system of dollar-a-year men worked out during World War II?





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