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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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of Congress was a good guide to what the rest of the world was like. He thought that the rest of the world was just like then, whereas, as a matter of fact, members of Congress are almost an eccentricity in the body politic. They are rather different from the ordinary kind of person. The kind of man who stands for Congress has to have certain qualities of vanity, hope, fear, ambition, desire to live without work, to receive honor in his own country in his own time, which is quite different from those of the ordinary man in the street, or the holy and humble man of heart, or the man who's plotting to forward himself by a different kind of self interest.

I came to realize that as I realized the slight degree to which Byrnes understood some of the support of Roosevelt, the support that came from people who weren't in politics. Harry Hopkins, for instance, understood the human race pretty well and understood Roosevelt's support. Although he was slightly cynical in expression, and only in expression, he was more than ready to act as though he believed that all men were good and if given a chance would do the right thing. But that didn't mean that he would close his eyes to the fact that someone who appeared to be walking with you politically





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