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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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“Yes, sure they do. There must be some new, recent benefit that you've given them just at the last minute.”

I said, “Well, then it won't get any consideration this term.”

“That doesn't matter,” he said, “It doesn't matter whether it gets any consideration this term. We'll pass it next year. It'll be a good talking point. Have it introduced just before adjournment,” which is what we did, I think. My memory is that we had it introduced just before adjournment. I never told it to Wagner, who I think was the man who introduced it. Wagner was very sore that he didn't get the Social Security Bill which had gone through by this time. I never told this because some people would think that that was too political.

The President laughed. He meant to put it through, but there was no sense in distributing your favors so early that they'd get used to it and forget it, which is very interesting in the light of this recent election of 1952. The people who voted forgot all about the benefits which had come to them strictly and solely from the New Deal and the Fair Deal. They just forgot it. They thought everything was born that way. No matter how much you told them about the past, they couldn't remember. I remembered Franklin Roosevelt saying to me, “Never do your





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