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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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to a principle - “We'll always do this.” It was just something that he would deduce into a practical principle.

I think in my book I wrote of the fact that he once said, “You know how you deal with patronage. Be very nice, very kind, very polite to all of the state committeemen. Take them out to lunch. I used to take them out to lunch when I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy to take them off Secretary Daniels' hands. A nice lunch, a lot of jollying and a good, flattering talk would do more for them than two appointments. They'd go away happy. You didn't have to give them the appointments if you treated them right and made them happy.” He reduced that to a policy he could put in words and could give to me as a piece of advice. But he had arrived at that not by any mental process, but by personal approaches to a critical situation which had to be handled some way and he handled it by devices which sprang out of his own internal personality.

When I was writing my book, I was understanding certain new movements in art. I recalled that the way he worked is the way the modern artist works - not with a pattern in mind, not saying, “I will paint a landscape in Holland,” or not saying, “I will now paint a figure composition of Cupid and Psyche or the gods in Valhalla or the Holy Family.” That was the old-fashioned artist's way. He took his





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