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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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His father died when he was quite young and he seemed to have had very little recollection of him - not much recollection of him. His father was a hard-working man and I don't think that he remembered much more about him than that. He went to work at age eleven. I never heard him talk about his father. I doubt if he remembered him much.

But his mother was of course a very dominant influence in his life. He had to cooperate with her to maintain the family. There didn't seem to be anything mushy in their relationship, but she obviously had a great deal to do with his growing up to be the kind of person he was. She had the highest standards and principles herself. You could see them sticking out all over her. She had none of the easy-going Irish in her. She wasn't that kind. She was a strong-minded, strong-charactered person. That was a very impressive thing.

We spent that evening with Smith and before the evening was over he gave his assent to some preliminary publicity on this, as a kind of a trial balloon. From that point on the thing grew. He asked Mrs. Moskowitz to go to work on it in detail. Within a few weeks she said to me that she would like to be the Executive Secretary of this Reconstruction Commission. I agreed that she ought to be. She'd conceived it. She had the ideas. She had the program. I don't





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