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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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gone by, so far as the convention was concerned and the hospitality committee was concerned, it became a problem. Our plans for hospitality and our program had not extended beyond one week. We hadn't anticipated that anyone could hold out as long as that. So we had to hastily scurry together, get people to invite the women, which we were particularly responsible for, for lunch, to spend the weekend somewhere, to go Sunday to the country. By the middle of the second week the financial problem had become acute and the women delegates and alternates were unable to afford to stay any longer. Very few of them had any ample supply of funds and they just couldn't afford it. They were desperate. Yet they wanted to do their duty. So we set to work to get people to invite them to stay with them. All of us took in anywhere from two to six, depending on the size of the house. By this time it was mid-summer. Many houses that were big enough to entertain guests were not open. People had gone away, were living in the country or the suburbs, which wasn't practical for the delegates to go to. In a number of cases people who had big houses and would have liked to have entertained them if they had been at home and fully staffed, contributed a couple of hundred dollars and said to put somebody up at a hotel. We had that problem of locating them and getting them entertained in private houses.





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