Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 564

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

I probably sent Susanna back to New York on Monday, March 7, because, after all, She was in school and she couldn't miss school. Miss Jay was still with me, although Miss Jay had not yet resigned from the New York Department of Labor and still had her duties there. She came down with the delegation from the Department, but she stayed with me for a couple of days to get me started and sort of adjusted, helping me out with the innumerable letters, telegrams, and things that were coming in.

I thought on Monday morning that, of course, the real works of life would begin. Up until this time it had all been ceremony and excitement of inauguration. Up to that time nobody had contacted me from the Department of Labor. Roosevelt had given me no instructions as to what to do - certainly not. He assumed we were all grown-up people who knew what to do as well as he did, or better, which is true. A person walking in to Washington under ordinary circumstances wouldn't know where the Department of Labor was. Today (1953) he would know there was Department





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help