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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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among very few people, understood that and knew how good and kind he was at heart. When you saw him in his own house with her, he was very pleasant, warm-hearted, even witty and amusing, not bitter and sarcastic at all in his comments on people. That was the only time I ever saw him except as a news gatherer trying to gather information out of me that I didn't care to give him.

His technique when he was trying to get something out of you was very unpleasant, I may say. However, I got another feeling about him from that one contact with him on a purely social level - that there were streaks of decency in him. He had a very bad reputation around Washington. I don't mean a moral reputation, but a reputation for being ruthless, gauche, brutal and all that.

This day at the convention he called me up at eight o'clock in the morning or so. He was a newsman and wasn't supposed to care who was nominated for President. He was there to report the news. But he said to me something like this, “I'm just desperate. What's going on at this convention is just dreadful. I don't know whether you are aware of how terrible thing are in this convention. Everything's going from bad to worse. I don't know what's going to happen. The Democratic Party is going to break up.”





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