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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Any other time I could have left on the grounds that I preferred another job, but the President wasn't dealing with a normal situation. When he said he couldn't put his mind on it, I knew exactly what he meant. He had to think about diplomacy, foreign affairs, wangling this or that, the problems of the army and the navy. The planning on that side of it was simply stupendous. It was something I knew nothing about. I wasn't doing that for him. That he had to do for himself. Those decisions were terrific decisions. This labor and social welfare stuff was secondary in the war effort. It had to be attended to, but it had come to be secondary so far as the President was concerned. He knew that so long as I was there I would keep it going in what he regarded as a right direction, that I would not let them make slave laborers out of young children.

On November 7, 1940, after the election, Roosevelt came back from Hyde Park, and the whole Cabinet went down to Union Station to meet him as an act of courtesy and good will. I don't think that was done before. There seemed to be a special reason for doing it then. It had been a kind of bitter campaign, sort of hot. Somebody proposed that we should all go and meet him. We met him at the train and all went into the car and talked with him. Then we came out. When he came off the train, he went into his automobile, and





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