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It didn't seem to him apparently anything to make a political issue out of. It wasn't important enough.

On the other hand, he appointed very early a Cabinet committee on Economic Security, out of which we developed the Social Security Act. I took that very seriously. I don't know how seriously the other members took it. I had some difficulty with them to keep their noses to the grindstone. But I took it seriously. Perhaps if I hadn't wanted to take it seriously, I could have washed it out, and nothing would have happened. I had thought of this device. I think I talked with the President about it and suggested that it would be better if more than one element of the Cabinet was represented. I thought it would gather ill will if only the Secretary of Labor was developing the program for Social Security, that it wouldn't have as broad a basis of possible friends and followers as if other elements in the Cabinet were brought into it. Between us we thought about this idea of a Cabinet meeting.

On that Committee he also put Hopkins, although I had thought only about a Cabinet committee. But I readily accepted Hopkins. Hopkins was not in the Cabinet at the time. He was just the head of the relief agency, but the President, of course, saw Social Security as having a large influence on relief and poverty. He thought naturally, in that rather quick way of his