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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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a job as a stenographer, and he got to be appointed a court stenographer. Then he wangled his way to study law with the judge he was stenographer to. Then he got elected to the local South Carolina Assembly, and then he got elected to Congress. So he never got much chance to get a real education. And you know that kind of a man who learns by experience learns a lot, but it's not very well oriented or classified so that he can see the relations of one problem to another problem. Every judgment he has to make has to be based upon the events and the situations of the moment.

Q:

Ad hoc judgments.

Perkins:

Ad hoc, yes - very much of the moment, and no great learning as to what went on in the background.

That was the first time that I recognized that Byrnes - who had been very helpful to the President really, I mean he's a very good politician and had been helpful to him on politics - might be a hazard. I realized then that he might be a hazard.

Q:

You remember that throughout this period of 1943, 1944 and up through March of 1945, Byrnes was head of O.W.M.R.?

Perkins:

Well, that wasn't anything. It was just one of those wartime fantasies that the President rigged up. You,





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