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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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There are some newspaper writers who act as though I were Mrs. Roosevelt's closest childhood friend and that's why the President was persuaded to put me in the Cabinet. I always knew him better than I knew her.

I was an Eastern girl. I never knew there was a USA until I became Secretary of Labor. Chicago was my furthest West.

The Volstead Act didn't heat me up much one way or the other. I was busy minding my own business and had plenty of it. I had plenty of business and plenty of problems. After all the State of Maine had Prohibition for years.

I'm sure I wasn't at the gubernatorial convention of 1922 where there was a big fight between William Randolph Hearst and Al Smith. I took part in that campaign and did all I could. I think that was the first year that the Women's Division put a special group of speakers on to go up through the upstate towns and speak to women's meetings. I did a lot of that and did as much as I could. I was having a tough time personally at that time. Things were very pressing in my family. I had this job I was trying to make a go of which the Merchants Association backed. It was a drudgery and keep-your-nose-to-the-grindstone period.

It wasn't assumed that the minute Smith got back into office I would return to the Industrial Commission. It





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