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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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he would have had it been his own business. He was concerned with every detail. I believe him to have been a very superior administrator. He did very well indeed with the Post Office and was full of brand new ideas. It was his idea to make all these commenorative stamps, because there was a market for them. There's no reason why you shouldn't make them. He was always making little jokes about it, but it was a good idea. He was the one who suggested, when the public works art project was on, “Why don't you paint up the post offices? If you're going to put artists to work painting frescoes, why not paint frescoes on the country post offices?” It was a very good idea really. He had kind of a natural flair for that kind of administration.

He had a great capacity for friendship, and, of course, it's well known that he never forgot a person's name or a face. He had a fantastic memory for that, which is a super-politician's technique. But he did it very naturally. It didn't seem to bother him in the least. He was very remarkable about that.

He had a certain flair for publicity too. He always wrote in green ink. You knew from the outside of the letter that you were getting a letter from Jim Farley, because it was in green ink and few other people write





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