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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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greater utilization of it; improvement in educational facilities as well as basic improvements in social and labor legislation.

This Reconstruction Commission was Mrs. Moskowitz's idea. She had joined in the cohort to support Smith in his first election out of pique against Governor Whitman and at the very last moment practically in the campaign. With that one brief contact with him she had established herself as a personage at the headquarters - somebody who had done something during the campaign and that always means a great deal. The personal relationship hadn't started yet. I introduced them in the last week of the campaign. He'd never seen her. She'd never seen him.

The election then took place and Smith was elected. She had one of the most busy, active and vigorous minds that I have ever met. Right away after election she began talking to me in terms like this: “We must do something. This administration of Smith's has got to mean something positive to the people of New York. We must pick up a program. Everything has drifted along previously. The war is over and people expect something to be done - something new to be done. The end of the war and the throwing out of the special war legislation is a time for new beginnings.” She talked about it in a half-developed way a number of times with me. I was interested naturally. I didn't know I was going to be





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