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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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She and I had a date to meet every night after the convention adjourned at the soda fountain on the first floor of the Hotel Stevens. While other people were going to whiskey parties and late champange parties, we would meet in the Hotel Stevens, sit on green leather upholstered stools in front of a soda counter, drink milkshakes, orange juice. We had more fun. She was very witty and very funny, terribly interested in politics. That was where we would sum up the events of the day. It spared me many problems, many embarrassing situations, when I would almost have had to accept an invitation to a party I'd rather not go to. But I had this engagement with her and I told everybody it could not be broken. So I was spared from getting into some of these after the convention conferences which put people into pockets, where you had to be pledged to one person or another.

In the great lobby of one of the hotels, perhaps the Stevens, was Paul McNutt's headquarters. There was Paul McNutt's picture, bigger than life - huge, heroic, statute size - up on an easel on the stairs several steps up. It was surrounded by palms, red, white and blue bunting and quite an elaborate decorative scheme back of it. People were being invited into the headquarters. It's courtesy at a convention to visit the





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