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I was protecting Bridges. Then there began to be gossip of the most extraordinary kind that I knew Bridges very well indeed, that I was a close personal friend. James Houghteling, when he was at a dinner in San Francisco in about '38, was told by sombody at the dinner that they knew for a fact that Bridges had visited me at my estate in Virginia. Of course, poor Houghteling nearly burst and said, “Now, just wait a minute. In the first place, I know Miss Perkins very well. In the second place, I know she has no estate in Virginia. I know she hasn't got so much as a piece of land in Virginia, or a cabin, or a camp, or a tent. She hasn't any connection whatever with Virginia. She never goes to Virginia. So Virginia is out. What's ore, I know that she doesn't know Bridges, that she has never seen Bridges except out here in San Franc isco on the waterfront, in the hiring hall, or at the time of a strike. She may have seen him in the office since these deportation proceedings began. That I don't know.”

That kind of filthy rumor would circulate. No one has any idea of the people to whom it was said. It's the kind of gossip that goes on in Amercan, and nobody cares. I didn't know Bridges at all, except as a man who is in a lebor union with whom you are dealing. You have an official acquantanceship with him, mostly over the