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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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is one of the few states where state government is very, very important. They don't look to Washington for leadership, never have and don't want to. New York has its own government and looks after it well, shows its Governor great respect, gives him prestige, style and so forth. This came about as a constitutional amendment.

The Governors had always served two years and every four years the election came in a Presidential year. What we had discovered was that in the in-between campaign you got much more attention to state problems, state policies, policies of the Governor and the members of the Legislature than you did in the Presidential year. In the Presidential year they practically closed down so far as attention to state business was concerned. That was regarded as very unfortunate.

By this time Bob Moses was moving around very vigorously too in the state quarters. That was certainly one of his ideas. I remember hearing him talk about this ages before. It must have been a constitutional amendment that was properly prepared and properly passed through the Legislature and then submitted to the people in the usual way that we do. In the Industrial Commission we kept right on doing more of the same thing.





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