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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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people, such planks as I thought were suitable for the labor sections of the platform. I don't mean to say that I alone had done that. A number of people had cooperated. The planks seemed to me to be satisfactory and suitable. Those were all being kept under wraps. The ruse, which I think was Wagner's idea, of placating John Lewis by asking him to come out, was merely to drag out of Lewis, as though it were an original thought of his, what the committee already intended to be put in the platform. What had been drafted up for them by some advisers had not been published and was not in circulation.

Lewis is not an original thinker. He would never have an original thought of what was to go into the platform. He could be led to say the right things. They were fairly obvious. He said that he was in favor of this, or thought that they should do that. I think that was a device of Wagner's. I think he thought it was a smart trick, and indeed it was a very good trick.

The platform committee was seeing a lot of people separately or in small groups, going over certain sections of the platform with them, ostensibly asking their advice, but really getting them to give forth much of what the committee had privately thought would be the best thing for the platform.





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