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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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the people making Portland cement, the lumbermen, the railroad men transporting, the truck drivers bringing who also got work. All those incidentals made work too, but you, couldn't get them into operation right away. While we wanted to go forward toward that, we couldn't rely on it, because the situation was too acute. There must be direct relief of some sort soon.

They all agreed with me. The President knew that was true. However, everybody dodged this because it was awfully hard to say how much we should appropriate for it, how we should give it out - handouts, or what? The President didn't think of this as the dole. That only had to do with unemployment insurance. A true dole of giving bread at the door didn't bother him. He had no theoretical opposition to the giving of cash relief, or relief in kind, giving out food. In fact, as an old-fashioned man, he was kind of inclined to think, “Give them food, clothes and shoes, and fuel, rather than cash relief,” although that wasn't a fixed position.

What interested me was that at this Cabinet meeting there were many people whom I thought very conservative. Swanson and Hull didn't seem to me to be in the radical crowd at all in their thinking. Yet, they were completely in accord with the idea that relief must be given. John





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