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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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We would be repaid in the development of trade in the future. All mixed up with these ideas are the ideas of free trade, or freer trade, greater international trade, which Roosevelt also believed were a part of the necessities of the future, of the wise choice of America for the future. The whole early movement, under Mr. Hull's leadership, for the revision of the tariff by the reciprocal trade agreements was a movement in that direction. Roosevelt accepted Hull's idea as being politically very wise and very practical. It could be gotten through when a great amendment to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill couldn't have gotten through. It had the effect, which was, after all, all he wanted, of introducing us to a broader trade, a wider trade. Roosevelt certainly looked forward to a situation of world economy where a great stimulation of international trade would develop, and that would give us back all we ever gave them, and, of course, it has. Look how prosperous the USA was after the war. Who could ever mutter about what the over-age destroyers cost, or anything else for that matter? We as a society got back a great deal from that.

There was no question that there was an emotional alliance with the British among most people. However, if you moved around in Yorkville, and in some parts of Boston, which looked to Dublin rather than to England as the saviour





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