In September 1917 , he was appointed counsel to a commission , the President 's Mediation Committee , established by President Wilson to resolve major strikes threatening war production . Among the disturbances he investigated were the 1916 Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco , where he argued strongly that the radical leader Thomas Mooney had been framed and required a new trial . He also examined the copper industry in Arizona , where industry bosses solved industrial relations problems by having more than 1,000 strikers forcibly deported to New Mexico . Overall , Frankfurter 's work gave him an opportunity to learn firsthand about labor politics and extremism , including anarchism , communism and revolutionary socialism . He came to sympathize with labor issues , arguing that " unsatisfactory , remediable social conditions , if unattended , give rise to radical movements far transcending the original impulse . " His activities led the public to view him as a radical lawyer and supporter of radical principles . Former President Theodore Roosevelt accused him of being " engaged in excusing men precisely like the Bolsheviki in Russia . " Frankfurter and Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis secretly collaborated over many years on numerous covert political activities . The relationship began after Brandeis secured Frankfurter a position at Harvard through Jacob Schiff . Brandeis enlisted Frankfurter as his paid political lobbyist and lieutenant . In May 1917 when U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing received a report that the Ottomans were extremely weary of the war and that it might be possible to induce them to break with Germany and make a separate peace with Britain , Brandeis and Frankfurter worked to prevent this from occurring . Frankfurter became part of the delegation and persuaded the delegation ’s leader , former Ambassador Henry J. Morgenthau , to abandon the effort . This was described in books by Jehuda Reinharz , Peter Grose , Peter Balakian , and Charles Glass , as reported in '' Against Our Better Judgement '' , by Alison Weir
Preparedness Day Bombing
Preparedness Day Bombing
Felix Frankfurter