The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

NEW YORK, Friday—I have had a great many requests from readers asking how they could obtain a copy of a report on Senator McCarthy made by a Senate subcommittee. At first I told them to write their Congressmen and ask for it, but it turns out that only a few copies were printed and they are all gone. The material has been turned over to other Senatorial committees, particularly one committee of which Senator McCarthy's friend, Senator Jenner, is chairman, so there probably will be no more copies.

However, if my readers are interested they can get the March 30 issue of the New Republic, which reprinted the highlights of the report on Senator McCarthy.

I am told that the Senator feels he is being unfairly attacked because of the patriotic work he is doing by bringing to the attention of the public the danger of communism in the United States. I often wonder if he realizes how well he is doing the work of the Soviets.

He would get some good pointers on how much they like to create suspicion in a country they wish to destroy if he read the efforts Stalin made to make the people of Yugoslavia suspicious of their leaders, after those leaders decided no longer to follow Stalin's dictates. To make people suspicious of one another and to weaken a nation from within is good Communist procedure, and Senator McCarthy has been extraordinarily successful in accomplishing these ends.

Since I returned from New Orleans on Monday we have been having some anxious and very busy times because my secretary, Miss Thompson, was taken seriously ill and has been in the hospital since then. I always think I fully appreciate how much work is done for me and I have always felt that I knew how invaluable Miss Thompson is, but you just have to be without someone who is always there to really discover how many things they do which frequently you do not even notice.

On Thursday afternoon I went with Mrs. David Levy, Miss Charlotte Carr, and Mrs. Joseph P. Lash to see New York City Comptroller Lazarus Joseph. The action of the state is forcing the city to reconsider its financial setup. In some ways this may be beneficial, but one cannot help feeling that the state is unwise in the way it is bringing about certain situations that must be handled quickly and therefore may not be handled as wisely as they should be.

Waste certainly can be eliminated. There is waste in all government administrations, state and city, and there is even waste in many large private businesses. But to bring about economies by curtailing necessary services to the people of a big city is completely false economy.

It has been suggested as a possibility that day-care centers for children of working mothers will be closed. It also has been said that the new tuberculosis hospital will not be opened though it is now ready for patients who are at present walking around spreading the disease.

These are just examples of unwise economy and I hope they can be avoided.

E. R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 4, 1953

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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