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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I never gave a thought as to whether Uncle Henry was a good father to him. I don't know anything about that. I just know that he raised him, he paid for his education. He got over being a problem child when he got hold of a thing he enjoyed. I certainly wouldn't blame his family for making him a problem child. Problem children are problem children because they were made that way. They were made that way or they make themselves that way. They are little devils by nature. They don't like to agree with anybody. One person or another would raise them just as well. I don't hold at all with the Froudian idea that somebody of an earlier generation did something wrong to you and therefore you're a problem. I know quite a few people who had everything wrong done to them and they're just first-class people. They're no problem to anybody.

The whole agricultural approach apparently was just exactly right for him. I never followed him with great care. I wasn't much interested or concerned about him as a person. His father sent him to another school. I think young Henry had a Cornell agricultural background. He brought George Warren down to Washington when he got here. He was an agricultural economist. He had met him at Cornell and it was from him that he had acquired some deep-seated ideas about fiscal policy in relation to economic policy and





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