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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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ships. You're going to operate them now. Business is picking up. You certainly haven't been forced into making an unprofitable economic situation for yourselves.”

We stood and talked for some time. I said, “Can't we sit down and talk this out?” There's a wing in the lobby of the Carlton Hotel which is really a sort of a foyer for the ballroom of the hotel, which is closed off ordinarily with the big banquet room. It's a sort of a long corridor, really a long, narrow room, not enclosed. We went and sat in there on a sofa. We sat there until six o'clock that afternoon talking. I remember that Lapham talked very openly, very freely. The more he talked the better I liked him. He's not the kind of a person to whom you are attracted on first sight, because he's big, strong, and has a kind of scowling look. He's a bit too fat for it to be becoming to him. He has a very vigorous way of speaking. That's how I had known him before.

On this occasion I sort of got back of that. I began to realize that underneath this there was a gentleman, and that there was a cultivated man, a man of education. I had never known anything about him before. I had never looked him up. I never knew anything about his back round. He was just Roger Lapham, the President





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