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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that sort of grumbling. Nevertheless he said, “Of course, the President's made a terrible mistake by announcing that he wouldn't come out, because if he were here, he could put some kind of warm feeling over it so that people would, out of shear friendliness for him, go forward.”

I talked to enough people so that I got in my own mind a conviction that at least I ought to tell the President dent what was going on, and tell it in my own words and my own way, urging him to come. It seemed to me as though he couldn't do any harm by coming and might do great good.

So I called him on the telephone at an hour when I knew I was likely to get him, which was along in the neighborhood of between nine and ten in the morning. It was always a mistake to call him too early in the morning. Of course, if you let it go too late, he would be involved in engagement, people would be with him and you couldn't have a talk where he was free to speak just as he wished to at the other end, without anybody present So I figured that between nine and ten, probably about half past nine, was a good time.

I called him and I got him. He was in the clear and there was nobody around. He had had his coffee and was feeling all right. He said, “How are things going?”





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