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When I wrote Roosevelt that letter, he hadn't offered me the post. This was a forestalling letter. I did it deliberately to forestall it. I don't know why I had this tender feeling about Roosevelt, but I felt that he might be embarrassed about all these things that had begun to appear in the press - that I was going to be Secretary of Labor. I wanted to have him know surely and particularly that I didn't want it and that he wasn't going to be kicking me out if he didn't appoint me. I really thought it was up to him to appoint somebody from the ranks of organized labor.

One can see what I was feeling. I had read the newspaper reports about me with growing consternation. Perhaps this consternation was unnecessary, but I decided to forget manners and write Roosevelt honestly. I walked the floor over this letter, as to whether to write it or not, because, after all, it was pretty fresh to assume that because I saw in the paper that it was being said that he might offer me the Secretaryship of Labor, that that was what he was going to do and then to write to him and say, “Now, don't do it, because I won't.” I tried to be polite about it, but I was pretty clear in my mind that it could not be.

I must have told Josephine Goldmark that I couldn't possibly do it just about the same time. Josephine Goldmark's