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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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the papers their views, whether it's the truth or not. They'll put it that way because they want to. That gradually forms public opinion among people who read Colonel McCormick's papers, with his extreme bias and his very vigorous opinions on mattes. It gradually brings a large part of the people who read his paper into agreement with him, because they don't hear anything else. They don't read anything else so they don't know the facts in the matter.

The press becomes a pressure group. I have known them to press for things to be done that would never have been done by the public official of his own initiative. On one occasion there was a strike in Akron. This happened several times in other towns too. The matter was being handled in the usual way, but the young man who represented an Akron paper asked me in press conference, “You're going out to Akron, aren't you, to look after this strike?”

I said, “No, I hadn't thought of it.”

“Why, this is a very important strike. Certainly you're going out!”

Then you begin to compromise with it because you can begin to see how it would look in the headline - “PERKINS REFUSES TO COME TO AKRON.” You see how it looks to the people of Akron who think their strike is important, and it is very important to them locally. It's very important





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