Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 564

with this great brainstorm about giving the unemployed relief by taking them out into the woods to do forestry work. I first heard about this from the mouth of Franklin Roosevelt, without any preparation at all. When I say that this is a pipedream, I mean that it was just that - a pipedream. I thought is was a pipedream. I don't think I said that then, because there were other people about and I was never rude to him in public. He could take a joke that was fairly rude in private, but I never did that in public, and certainly not in those days. However, it struck me then that that was just one of his pipedreams, just a crazy idea - “Does he know the unemployed are like? Who they are? Where they are?”

I think he announced this thing first of all at a Cabinet meeting. Everybody sort or blinked. Many or them said, “That's a fine idea,” being utterly impractical about who the unemployed were, and how you would get them to the woods. I remember saying to him, “Well, Mr. President, what are they going to do when they get to the woods?”

“Well, you know. . .do the work that has to be done with trees. Our forests are going to pieces. We must preserve our forests. We must build dams to keep the water from running off.”

I said, “Yes, I know, but what about the unemployed? Where are they?”





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help