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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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difference to them. They can't get it through their heads that you're the head of a Labor Department in New York.” She was very scornful and very funny about it.

We then had the idea that perhaps we could fly upstairs between the hours of quarter to six and seven-thirty and gather our ideas for speeches, perhaps gargle our throats and rest a minute. No. I'll have you understand that before six o'clock in came the people who'd come to have supper with us. A very large number of people had been asked for a very beautiful buffet supper.

The thing I remember principally about that supper was that the first thing I was asked to have - and I guess Irene too, although we were separated by this time - was someone saying, “I'm goin' to bring you some corn likker.”

I said, “But we can't. It's against the Prohibition Law.”

“Against the law, nuthin'. You've been in Patrick County this afternoon, haven't you? You know what the law is in this part of the state. No law of God or man stops us makin' corn likker down here.”

I said, “How do you manage to get it?”

“Why,” he said, “I just go down to the corner. I wave my hand and put up two fingers. Some nigger boy he comes running up to me. I says, ‘Here's ten dollars. You go get





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