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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 654

I wrote an obituary of Harry Hopkins for the Survey magazine. When I was writing that I made some other notes too. Also, the obituary is quite good. I had known Harry Hopkins long before he had any part at all in political life. That was because he was a social worker and I was a social worker. It was on those terms that we met.

He was the brother of Adah Hopkins who was an older sister of his. When I arrived in New York as a young social worker, she had some very important secretarial post in the school of social work that they were attempting to conduct in the Charities building. It wasn't a really organized one, but it was just the idea of making it possible for social workers to study special subjects and special techniques, and so improve their general knowledge of the whole field of social work. She was also, I think, the secretary of the Survey magazine, which was not then called the Survey magazine. It was called the Charities Review. So she was in a kind of editorial and secretarial relationship to a good deal of social work. I think she later called herself a social worker and I think she did some actual social work, but I think she had begun as secretary who happened to get a job in a field where they were doing social work.





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