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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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We went first to Baltimore. Nobody wrote us any speeches. Nobody told us what to do. We kind of got the idea from conferences. Mary Eben ran the speaker's routing. She knew who it was in every town and city that was ready for us, was responsible for getting up the meeting, and who would meet us.

We went to Baltimore first. I think we stayed two or three days in Baltimore. It was really one of the most amusing and illuminating experiences I've ever had. We went down on the Eastern shore from Baltimore. They were very, very dissident down there. They couldn't bear the thought of Smith. Irene hadn't thought that being Catholic would be a problem in Maryland, because there was a big, old Catholic foundation, but being Irish was different. We had to overcome the Irishness of it in Maryland.

There were some of the most terrible, fantastic prejudices and dreadful yarns that I ever heard about Roman Catholics I heard on the campaign in Maryland. It was there that they really believed stories about the obscene practises that went on in thoroughly Catholic countries like Poland, for instance. They believed it and told you these ancient yarns that I now know have been the folklore of everything that had to do with black magic. They told you that that was what the Catholic did in Poland. I had pointed out to me in Maryland the estate which had been purchased for the Pope and where





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