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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 915

Since then I've seen other pictures of the same thing. But it looked very low-lived to me. There's no harm in having an orchestra play at a dinner party, but they played raucous music of one kind or another.

The dinner proceeded. There was lots of liquor served. Then the photographers came in. That annoyed me beyond words. I just thought it was terrible. Harold Ickes was very disturbed about this, grumbling, “This place is full of well-known thugs. Kelly's brought in all the lowdown crooks of Chicago.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“All the political crooks. All the low-lived creatures.”

He knew all this. They didn't mean anything to me except that they did look as though they might meet Harold's description.

Then the photographers came in. It seemed to me that they ought either not to have had the crooks and the nightclub band, or they ought not to have had the photographers - one or the other. Let the boys entertain themselves anyway they wish at a convention, but don't get the photographers in, I would have said. After all, it was a private dinner. There was no reason why they should have come in, but they did. They photographed





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