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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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as Democratic National Committeemen from Connecticut, which is all that he had ever been before, and a second-rate lawyer practising in Stamford, Connecticut, he would never have been thought of for the Supreme Court. But if you have been Attorney General, that's experience that is regarded as substantial experience.

This idea that Cummings wanted to be on the Court does not come from Harold Stephens, but is my own idea, to which Harold Stephens, when I asked him if he thought so, said, “Miss Perkins, I never have permitted myself to look into another man's mind, but I know that since I aspired to the Supreme Court it is not improbable that Homer did also.” There was more reason for Stephens' aspiring, I think. He was a great lawyer, in the first place. He was appointed to be Assistant Attorney General because he was a good lawyer. He came from the West and it was essential to have a man on the Court from the West. So that his dream of being on the Court, which came later when there was a vacancy which should have been filled by a western man, was more realizable. But Douglas was appointed.

At any rate, the Schechter case was selected by Cummings. His reasons for doing it, I do not know. It was against the advice of the more competent men in his





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