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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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pleasant voice, with a pleasant expression on your face. You say the same thing, but--”

He said, “Madame Secretary, you suggest that I should take the scowl of my face?”

I said, “Yes. Certainly when you're being photographed, take it off. I saw you that day before the Committee of Congress. The minute the cameras were focussed on you, you scowled right up. I suggest you don't do that, because that's the picture of you that goes out to the United States, and they think you're a demon.”

“Well,” he said, “Madame Secretary, you suggest that I should not scowl when I speak to the public?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Madame Secretary, that scowl is worth a million dollars to John L. Lewis.”

And he was right. He created in the minds of the mine-workers the sense that he was courageous and indefatigable and undefeatable, and that he would see them through to the end, and that he just wanted to lash the operators. He created in the minds of the public at large a kind of terror which would really make them give way with relief when some fairly advanced but not too radical a proposition was put forward as a means of settlement.

Interviewer:

What did Roosevelt think of Lewis?





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