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

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NEW YORK—Yesterday was a busy day,—besides the morning spent for the most part at the Herald-Tribune Forum, Miss Dickerman and I had a most interesting conference at lunch time with some college presidents. The question under discussion was "What is the real contribution which should be made by a small private school for girls, and what do the colleges feel should be done during the high school years?" It seemed a most fruitful subject for discussion and I hope that Miss Dickerman and I will learn a great deal by getting other people's opinions and thoughts, which should help us in formulating the aids and objects which should be paramount in framing the curriculum of a private school for girls today.

In the afternoon I visited a friend in a Brooklyn Hospital and spent considerable time making false starts in the subway and finding myself on wrong trains. The subway is becoming almost as interesting a place for making acquaintances as the taxi cabs. I think a very large number of the taxi drivers in New York City are now my acquaintances and on the subway yesterday I had a nice little talk with a young man who was carrying one of Selma Lagerlöf's books and who was rather troubled by the fact that he could not feel the heroine was real because she seemed to be too good for this world!

I dined with a friend and we went to the theatre in the evening. It was my first play in months and I am glad that it was Maxwell Anderson's "Star-Wagon." There are some beautiful lines in it and some scenes both humorous and poetic. I think the choir rehearsal and the ensuing scene between the boy and girl are perfectly delightful and Mr. Burgess Meredith does a wonderful piece of acting from beginning to end. Miss Gish and Mr. Collins were outstanding too, and I think the play is one that no one will want to miss. One of the ideas which appealed to me was "if you don't care about money they take it away from you and if you have it, well, what have you?" I've not given the exact words but that's the idea which is proved amply true as the story develops.

This morning I went to the Mother's Milk Bureau run by the Children's Welfare Federation of New York City, Incorporated. I did not realize before how much work this Committee did. Like much of the other work for babies done in the city it was started by Dr. Josephine Baker and both Dr. Chapin and Dr. Wynne are interested in it. At the Milk Bureau they collect breast milk which is used largely for premature babies or for those who are desperately ill. They have a freezing process which allows them to ship it, not only all over the city, but to far distant points. It can be kept a year and still be in perfectly good condition when melted for the baby's use. The Committee sets up standards for the care of children in camps and baby shelters and guards the health of our children in many other ways. It seemed to me a fine work and surely is partly responsible for the lowering of infant mortality in this great city.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 6, 1937

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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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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HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

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 October 5, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 5 October 1937, AERP, FDRL