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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Operators' Association, you see, to do just this work and deal with Lewis, and it wore him out eventually.

At any rate, I got this over to the President, and he agreed to do it. Then Ickes called him--or he called Ickes, I guess. I said, “You'll have to speak to Ickes, you know. You'll have to ask Ickes to do it.”

“This was before the announcement was made. This was that very night, that Sunday night. The President did. Of course, it was only polite for him to call Ickes. I had talked with Ickes. We had talked back and forth several times about the details of it, but it was only suitable that the President should ask him. I mean, I couldn't ask him to do it, except that I could make the suggestion to him. So the President called him and asked him if he would.

That was a little pattern of diplomacy, really. Ickes certainly didn't say to him, “Yes, Miss Perkins has been telling me all about this.”

He never said that to him, and the President didn't say he'd talked with me. The President said, “I just have an idea that you'd be a good fellow to administer this, if you will.”

Well, of course, the conversation was short, Ickes said, “Yes,” but that was providing, of course, the miners would go through with it.

It was generally agreed that the next day--I think it was the next day or the next afternoon--the announcement





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