THE ADMINISTRATION: The Lady. Returns

Last week a lady ended her reminiscences of a U.S. President.

In a final installment in Collier’s, Frances Perkins recalled the day she went to Franklin Roosevelt to urge him to accept her resignation as his Secretary of Labor, the post she had occupied for twelve years. It was the eve of his fourth inauguration:

“He had the grey color of a man who had long been ill. . . . He said: ‘Frances, you can’t go now. You mustn’t put me to this. … I can’t think of anybody else, and I can’t get used to anybody else.’ “

So she stayed. He went to Yalta with the parting admonition: “You had better pray for me.” Miss Perkins recalled: “This was the only time I knew him to speak of the need of the prayers of others.”

But other women sensed impending tragedy. One of them was Mrs. Henry Wallace. ” ‘You know,’ ” she said to Frances Perkins, ” ‘I haven’t seen him for several months. I was frightened. Are you sure he is well?’

“I put my finger to my lips and she put her finger to her lips. We knew we must not talk about it.”

When the President came back, Miss Perkins recalled, “his face was gay, his eyes bright.” She marveled at him. She listened to his plans for San Francisco, for a trip with Mrs. Roosevelt to Britain: “I made a mild protest, ‘But the war. . . .’ He whispered, The war in Europe will be over by the end of May.’ “

There Miss Perkins ended her reminiscences.

She had left Harry Truman’s Cabinet two months after Roosevelt’s death. Since then, the nation’s only woman Cabinet member, one of the most controversial figures in the Roosevelt Administration, had lived a private life, writing.

Abruptly her private life ended. President Truman, badgered by women’s organizations to appoint a woman to a position of importance, asked her to serve as a member of the Civil Service Commission at a salary of $10,000 a year.

Last week Fanny Perkins got ready to return to Washington.