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principal allies I had in pressing the President to keep with this public works program. I remember Jim saying, “Mr. President, the people expect something like this. Everybody understands that public works is the thing that gives men work when they're out of work.” When he was saying that, he was talking about people, not about votes.

As time went on and all this social legislation went through, Jim, as he went around the country, began to see how important it was politically. When they came to write up the campaign books and they had to write about social legislation in the '36 campaign because that was all there was to write about, it was Jim who said, “There are votes in them than hills.” He said that to me. He said, “Frances, this was smarter than you knew.” He knew that I wasn't pushing this legislation on any political basis. It was very amusing, but he realized how much political power there was in that legislation. His reason for predicting politically that the President would carry every State but Maine and Vermont was based upon his knowledge that these particular pieces of legislation, this general attitude, had made the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal extremely popular. So Jim had political wisdom, but he was also convinced of these things. He was no time-server on this.