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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Elkus took Shientag in as Assistant Counsel to the Factory Investigating Commission, he was just a young, new, barely graduated lawyer, just through law school. He wasn't anything at all. He had no standing. Certainly nobody knew him - neither Smith nor Wagner. However, during the life of the Factory Investigating Commission Shientag became extremely useful and he became very close to Smith and to Wagner both. They both became personally fond of him and he was extremely useful to them. He was the kind of a young lawyer who could analyze the thing, find the answers, and give them to the political members of the Commission in such a way that they could use them practically and intelligently. He was a hard worker, industrious, asked for no glory for himself. I became also very much attached to Shientag as a very fine person as well as a fine mind.

I knew that he would continue to be in close touch with Smith all through Governor Smith's campaign. He had traveled with him and had helped him write his speeches. That isn't commonly known. In the first campaign Shientag was utterly unknown. Nobody had ever heard of him. All through that 1918 campaign he had traveled with Smith, written his speeches, studied the audience reaction, prepared the next day's speech on the basis of what were





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