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Nelson, and resumably talked to them on the same lines. About the same time Anna Rosenberg saw President Eisenhower and told him that she felt one reason the elections had gone wrong for the Republicans was that the people did not feel that the Republicans were interested in their health or welfare, that the Republicans just weren't interested in people, and that she felt cutting the research budget would be very serious.

He was sympathetic and said, “Well, I'll take this up at a meeting I'm having this afternoon.” As Anna departed from his office, she saw Nelson Rockefeller in the outer office, so evidently the meeting was to be with Nelson.

Within 10 days, much to my joy and relief, we heard that it had been decided by the President, and that Mrs. Hobby and Mr. Rockefeller had prevailed upon the Budget Director to hold the figures which had been voted by the House and Senate in '53 for the research institutes, in other words about 59 million dollars for the five Institutes we were most interested in, or 70 million for the seven Institutes.

By the middle of December it was clear that the Republicans felt it was necessary to have something to say about health in the President's State of the Union Message, and also that the President would send a special health message to Congress. This was the first time in the history of the United States that any Republican President deemed health important enough to mention the subject either in a Congressional message or in a special message of health to the Congress. There is no doubt that