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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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loyalty and a personal devotion which was quite remarkable. Roosevelt had it, but not to that extent.

Mrs. Kenneth Simpson is alleged to have said about Governor Thomas E. Dewey, “You have to know him real well in order to dislike him.”

F.D.R. did not evoke universal personal devotion among those people around him. He was a very dramatic personality really - more dramatic than we realize. When you look back on it now, you see that he was the kind of a man who could have played on one of these old-fashioned, huge theaters - the Boston Opera House or the big theater that Winthrop Ames built up at Columbus Circle in New York. Roosevelt could have played on that stage, whereas many actors in a modern play can only play on a small stage in a small theater. Roosevelt played better on the big stage. His dramatic sense was best in his understanding of the people who are, after all, our sovereign. He was devoted and he was en rapport with the people. That's an awful lot of people. That's the mass.

When it comes to a small group, he did not always evoke personal devotion. That was one of the hazards that he faced a good deal of the time. People were always running out on him. In my book I was very careful not to say who ran out. I slid over a lot of things, as did Grace Tully.





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