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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 731

To me it's a perfectly explicable thing that he had become interested in the problems of those people, of which he had never heard before. I can well believe it, because I certainly had never heard of the problems of the people of the West until I went campaigning. I was astonished at what they were. They were real problems. You didn't know the answers. They were sort of abandoned out there. Many of them had gone out there and settled those states because the government of the United States asked them to. Many of the pioneers who settled the West had gone out to keep this country free, if they hadn't gone out to get the areas away from the Indians. When those people talk about their problems, if you know anything about life and about this country, you see that many of the problems arose right out of the mountain people that came out. They can't today believe that they ought not to have assistance. Whenever they call for help from Washington, they ought to have it. I have never met people before to whom it had even occurred to ask for help from Washington, until I went campaigning in the West. I never heard of anybody who thought they could be helped from Washington, but there was. They settled you out there and they did help you when you were settling. When you needed help, you shouted and the army came. If not the army, then something else came along.





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