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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I said, “No, I didn't, but it was all I knew. I had to talk about what I knew.”

He was of the opinion that it had been more effective with that audience than Pat Harrison's much more finished and much more oratorically interesting and ornamental speech. He said, “This is something for the Democratic party to remember.”

That put it into my head then, and I've held it ever since, that that campaign, whether it elected Al Smith or not, would plant the seed of a set of ideas all over the country. I thought that then. I thought that people would begin to mull over them and people would begin to expect of candidates and of parties some kind of a program or some kind of a manifestation of action or concern for the welfare of the people - direct.

I didn't see that John W. Davis or James M. Cox or Roosevelt, when he ran for Vice President, did this. I didn't hear about it. There might have been a little, but you must remember that the Cox-Roosevelt campaign was very largely defensive. Cox and Roosevelt were defending the administration of Woodrow Wilson. I was impressed by the purposes of Woodrow Wilson's administration, but I was young, I was politically inexperienced and I had very little actual downright first-hand knowledge of what he was doing. Their





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