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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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through all that period. I may have seen him once, but just in passing somewhere. I was out of sympathy with it and could only bewail it as a mistake, but I couldn't tell him that. It was nothing to me. I mean, I had no right to say, “You shouldn't have done this.” I hadn't been asked.

He was certainly in a very exalted frame of mind, through this period. He live very exalte.

Interviewer:

Did you feel that in December of '46?

Perkins:

No, no, no. When he got to being in the Progressive Party as their leader, he lived exalte, and I don't think he saw what was going on. I don't think he noticed it. I mean, he just lived in his own idea of what these people were and what they would do. But they proved exactly what they would do, and they proved that I was right--that they would run from him the minute he was no longer riding high. They'd run away and leave him. They didn't bail him out.

I know nothing more about that whole episode. I can't shed much light on it. I think that his divergence into the Progressive party came later, although he'd been seeing these people.

Interviewer:

It must have come as a complete surprise to you, then?

Perkins:

Well, it did and it didn't, because I remember





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