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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that you had made a speech. Whether he had heard that it was a fine speech or not, I don't know, but he always would say, “I hear you made a fine speech.” He said that to everybody, not only to me, but to others.

You can say that all that is just a politician's technique, out it was a natural with Jim Farley, He meant it. He wasn't hypocritical. He couldn't have missed seeing the ugliest side of politics, but it didn't enter into his soul. It didn't damage his soul. He was Boxing Commissioner at one time and he certainly saw the seamy side there, but he ran that fair, on the basis of being fair. No scandals arose in those days. Jim had them all be fair, honest and fair. He has really very good standards and very good ideals.

I've already said that in the year or so before 1940 he came and spoke to me several times about this rumor of the third term. He was obviously and deeply disturbed about it. At that time I had not the remotest idea that he had any possible ambition to be President, or that he thought that it was at all reasonable to think about it. I don't know how that idea got into his head. I suppose it's one of the things that's contagious in American life. I've never really thought all of this out, and I've never asked him because I like him too well to go into that.





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