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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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same Cabinet? Were you bound in ties of remembrance of the man under whom you'd served?

Perkins:

Yes and no. The one thing that I got clearly in my mind was that this Cabinet was breaking up, even then. I mean, breaking up in the sense that a family may break up, you know, when they case to have whatever leadership their parents have given them, when their parents die. They've been held together in a kind of affection by that, but once they're dead, each member of the family pursues his own interests and goes his own way. And I remember having that feeling, that we were going to go our own ways.

We had a Cabinet meeting within a day or two after we got back.

Interviewer:

When you say “go your own ways,” what do you mean?

Perkins:

Well, I mean that we were not serving each other's interests any more; that we hesitated to give the assurances and the bona fides to each other that we would have if Roosevelt had been alive. We would have said, “Well, I'll speak to the President about that if you'd like me to.” We didn't say that sort of thing to each other. That was all over. That was off. Not any one of us knew exactly where we stood with Truman, you see. We didn't know whether we stood well or x ill, or just didn't stand anywhere, just vague.





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