Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

That's curious though, because in all those years in the Cabinet I never heard a dirty story, or a dirty joke, or an obscene oath. Perhaps it's true that if a woman hadn't been there, those stories would have been told, but I'm not sure that they would have, or at least not to any great extent. They weren't that kind of people. Certainly I don't think I had a terribly inhibiting personality because I was a mature person and I could laugh at a slightly off color story. That's of interest to me because I observed it. As I've said, the first time I heard them burst into blasphemy was the day war was declared, but even that was not obscene.

So the tome of the Cabinet meetings became much more serious. This was not because of the changes along. It was because of the change of the times. We had been through this internal struggle about the third term, but the war was on in Europe and it was getting more and more confused and complex every day. The fear that the English wouldn't be able to carry it was getting greater and greater. The President was more and more distracted. His mind and attention were more and more on the situations brought about by the existence of the European was, and less and less upon the political movements in our own country. Certainly we had come up out





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help