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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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weeks (June), appearing before an investigating committee of Congress he refused to say whether he had ever been a Communist or not on the grounds that to answer would incriminate him, and stating that his present means of livelihood was as the distributor of pictures and pictorial news in an agency which he had established in which they distributed news pictures from the Soviet Union. I guess that is the fact of the way he earns his living. That's what he's doing now.

But in 1935 Edwin Smith was not that kind of a person. He has a totally changed personality and point of view. I don't know when or why or how the changes began in Smith but I know he was a different man and had a good clear way of thinking in 1935 and earlier. I had known Edwin Smith during the period that I was Industrial Commissioner of the State of New York. At the time I was Industrial Commissioner of the State of New York he was Labor Commissioner of the State of Massachusetts, appointed by Governor Joseph Ely, Democratic Governor of Massachusetts of a very conservative type from the western part of the State. Joseph Ely is the man who eventually became anti-Roosevelt, joined the Liberty League and all that outfit. But he was very good and competent man.





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