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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 191

sort of thing. The first year I was out of office I was just--you may think I'm drowned in trash mail now, but I was more drowned in it then. I was just overwhelmed by mail about matters that I really had no responsibility for.

So then I began to dictate to the machine, to the dictaphone, and it proved to be a very great asset, because I had these old fashioned kind of cylinders, the wax cylinders. I would dictate usually from ten till three in the morning. Those were my best hours. Then I put these cylinders all in the basket, and put them on the stairs to the third floor. She'd come in in the morning at nine o'clock while I was sleeping, you see, and she'd take them upstairs and she'd begin to type. I would wake up and get going about eleven. Then I could go up and help her with a word here and there she hadn't understood. Everything went very well, and finally I proved that I could dictate so rapidly that I could keep another girl busy, and so she hired another girl. Then I hired a man to go and look things up for me and get dates right. I don't remember their names. Eventually I had five or six of them working for me.

Interviewer:

Nobody ever served as an interviewer on this? Somebody to ask you questions and spur your memory?

Perkins:

No. I would have liked that. That, I think, would





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