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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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contributed to, a good many of Governor Smith's speeches when he was running. I did this, of course, through collaboration with Bernie Shientag, Belle Moskowitz and others. I volunteered. I knew him well and was one of his officers. Frederick Greene was the Highway Commissioner of the State of New York, very able, irascible and a military man. He was very able and very good. He was always working. He always had brilliant ideas about Smith, as did Moses. Moses planned strategy more than he wrote speeches, although I think he contributed too.

I knew Smith well. I had written a great many things for him in the years I had served with him. I had helped him with messages that he had had to write. I always wrote the messages on bills that related to my Department. He was like everybody else. He changed what you sent him, but you gave the direction to him and sometimes the form. I had written a good many speeches for him while he was Governor. I had a quick way of doing it.

He would call me up, or would say, “I will get Commissioner Perkins to get something up on that,” or “Frances, she'll dope out something on that.” He would go over a speech and see a gap in the thinking or the material as he was thinking it out, so he'd say, “Get Frances to fix that up. She knows about that.” Somebody would call me and I





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