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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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from walking into it. I was of the opinion that you couldn't do it; that The President was committed to him politically in one way or another; that he had tried to mollify him and keep him on easy street.

Interviewer:

“Keep him on the reservation?”--he was still thought to be something of a political power.

Perkins:

Yes, he was thought to be something of a political power. People thought that he was more than he was. I've seen him flunk so many times that I was sure that he was nothing-- not only flunking the political tests, but flunking the plain administrative tests. I mean, he didn't know the elements of his own job as Director of Social Security. I've seen him try to make a speech that he couldn't read.

It had been written for him, all right. He came into the hall, and some secretary handed him the speech, and he smiled. He just looked around smiling and beaming. And he hadn't even read it over, so that the sentences didn't make any sense to him as he went along, and he couldn't improvise at all. It was just a terrific performance. He was a very handsome man. He was a magnificently handsome person.

I wouldn't like to say it, but he looked more like the ideal undertaker than like a politician. He was very handsome. He had, in a way, a classical profile, and he kept himself very





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