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

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WASHINGTON—I began this morning by going out to breakfast with some friends and five of us had a very pleasant time talking over many things we had not had a chance to discuss. After that I drove to Alexandria, Virginia and visited a WPA Day Nursery for colored children. They had only been open off and on for about a month, so they did not know yet how successful they were going to be in improving the general condition of the children. The relief load has come down considerably, in fact out of three hundred unemployed colored women, who used to be on their sewing project, they only have twelve remaining, but there was no question that these little children needed building up, they looked as though the two scourges, tuberculosis and rickets, were pretty prevalent among them.

From there I went to a sewing project for white women. Here also the relief load has come down from one hundred or more to seventeen and these women either have husbands who are now working so they can go back to taking care of their homes, or they are getting work in shirt factories. They told me the usual story that one third of their women had learned to sew since coming on the project which will mean, of course, much more efficient homes as well as added skill if they work in a factory.

A press conference at eleven, the last for the summer. Then a long talk with a group on some homestead matters. Two hours of conferences this afternoon and a number of people for tea, among them a little young couple who were married last Saturday and are starting tonight for Hollywood. The young man is hopefully planning to make connections again with the production end of the moving picture business. Youth is so trustful of life! These youngsters have known each other just a few weeks and are so obviously happy and wrapped up in each other that one feels like saying a prayer that the fates may be kind and spare them any disillusionments.

No chance to look at the mail all day so tonight must be spent in working.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 3, 1936

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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 draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated July 2, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 2 July 1936, AERP, FDRL