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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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just like that, you see. I said, “Oh, now, be careful,” and so forth. We said good-bye almost immediately.

Interviewer:

How do you explain his shift?

Perkins:

Well, I explain it that the idea of power had just come over him, and he had just risen with it. He was one of those people--once the power complex got operating in him, he'd go anywhere. You know, he did some very peculiar things in his own union. I mean, there's no doubt about it that he knew what was going on when some of these murders took place. If anybody challenged his power, he was right at'em, at their throats.

He'd made his way up in the world--up in the labor world-- by doing ruthless things, and grabbing people. He was very humble when he asked me in the Pennsylvania Station, “Wouldn't the President please call a little group of labor men in, and him among them? They would die if he didn't.”

He was very humble and very anxious to be seen by the President. But by this time,--you see, he'd been appointed by the President to the Advisory Commision of the Council of National Defense. They ran the War. I mean, that was what they were supposed to do. He had been appointed to that. It had given him great notions of his own authority, own power, own importance. He came to the point where he believed he could fix everything himself, settle everything himself.





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