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

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NEW YORK—It is interesting to read that the 1955 Pulitzer Prizes in journalism are in five instances given to reporters who have uncovered either bad practices in an area or injustice of some kind.

These Pulitzer Prizes are very inspiring; they furnish an incentive in many fields both in newspaper writing and the arts, and must be highly prized by the recipients.

Everyone should read with care the new AFL-CIO constitution because this is going to be a very powerful organization and its constitution has great potentialities for making the organization useful in the life of the nation.

I was particularly interested in the effort made to deal with any wrongdoing on the part of any union.

I also am pleased that there is to be nonsegregation. Under Article 2, paragraph 4, it says: "We encourage all workers without regard to race, creed or national origin to share in the full benefits of union organization." That is compliance with the spirit of the Supreme Court's decision on nonsegregation in schools and could well be followed in many other areas of national life.

This merger of the AFL and CIO will, of course, mean that there will be occasional difficulties, for traditionally the AFL unions are more conservative than the CIO unions. But the advantages of having labor act as a whole are so great, both to labor and management, that I think there is cause for congratulation on the merger.

I read that Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the anti-polio vaccine, in a technical talk to the American Society for Clinical Investigation urged that the anti-polio vaccine injections be very carefully spaced so that the body could develop full immunity to the polio virus.

He said that building up the protective antibodies for maximum effect depended heavily on the period between the first two injections and the third. He has recommended a spacing of two to four weeks between the first and second injections with the third seven to 10 months later.

From this it is quite evident that we should not expect much protection this year, and pharmaceutical houses should not either hurry the production too much or actually press for this production before the inspection methods have been carefully worked out and perfected.

In another year there should be enough for our own country and for other countries, and, properly given, this safeguard should be very effective. I think it is important, however, that we should not be allowed to expect too much this year. It may cause great discouragement before there really is any opportunity to get the full benefit from these inoculations.

(Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 5, 1955

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.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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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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