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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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of the United States in its possibility of intervention for the preventing of any further spread of the war, all those things began to be matters of great importance.

The matters for which I was primarily responsible like the extension of humanitarian legislation, naturally ceased to be of such importance. That was about the time I said to myself, “I'm jolly glad I got what I could get when the getting was good,” because I saw right away there would be no more for the present. I also thought it would be wrong to try to force it. I would have thought that about the beginning of the third term. There were still a few additions to be made to the legislation we have and a few corrections, but they were not vital. They could be postponed. Certainly the reforms that were needed were administrative and the improvements that were needed could be made administratively. I begun to realize that you weren't going to get the attention of the President or of the public or of the Congress to the things that were still on my list, such as health insurance, or some form of caring for the sick by the utilization of public credit. I realized that we must continue to make those recommendations, but that it wasn't going to be done for the present. We must prepare therefore to meet the war situations on the





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