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like to work under a woman. It's all right on the Board because she doesn't have to direct the men, but I don't think that men like to work under a woman. It's a big department. There are a lot of people at the head of various enterprises and I don't think men like to work under women. I think it will make trouble.”
Roosevelt told me that the day he asked me and he laughed when he told me that. He either thought it was funny, or he wanted to think it was funny, or it was an expression of some kind of vanity that he was more broad minded and more liberal than Smith was about these things. I recognize it as just being a difference due to temperament, background, knowledge of life and knowledge of women. He had a broader acquaintanceship with more kinds of women than Al Smith did, but Al Smith selected me in the first place and asked me to do it, which I think took the greater, shall we say, courage if you're breaking down the prejudices against women.
He also told me that he had talked with Eleanor and she thought it would be very popular with the women. She mentioned people like Caroline Slade and others who had said to her that they thought it would be fine. These were women who were concerned and interested with the proper enforcement of the labor law and who were always in the League of Women
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