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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 912

Interviewer:

Did you ever have any--

Perkins:

Well, that was all that I knew about that. I did talk to the President about it, oh, weeks afterwards--a long, long time afterwards. I took office the first or the fifteenth of October. I went back down to Maine, finished up what I was doing there, finished up my book things, and came up here and was sworn in, I think, the fifteenth of October. I didn't see the President intimately for some time.

I did at one time say to him--he asked me something about, “Wallace did this or Wallace said that--I said, “How in the world did Wallace ever get into that jam, when he made his speech?”

He said, “I don't know. He certainly read his speech to me, but I understood that the State Department had cleared it, and that he was just getting my extra approval on it.”

But you know, what you understand isn't always what is said--you know that.

Interviewer:

Do you suppose he could have gotten that idea from Wallace, or that he just had it himself?

Perkins:

One doesn't know. Wallace may have said, “I talked with Mr. Loy of the State Department,” you know. The President, not listening very carefully, might have though it was official. The President has to trust his officers to be in total good





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