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

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CHICAGO—Our trip to Milwaukee by air on Friday morning was rough in spots but we were on time and had five minutes at the hotel on arrival before we sped on in an automobile to the Illinois Women's Club.

Lunch had been arranged there with the heads of many organizations which have as one of the interests of their organizations support of the United Nations. After the lunch at which the speeches were brief the meeting turned into a workshop at which Mr. Clark Eichelberger and I answered questions, primarily on how to reach people more effectively with the story of the United Nations.

As usual, questions on the American Legion's attitude toward the U.N. came up. Fortunately, in Milwaukee we were joined by Mr. Irving Salomon, who edits our American Association for the United Nations fact sheet for businessmen. He had spoken to a businessmen's luncheon and a meeting of businesswomen and then joined the workshop where Mr. Eichelberger and I were.

Two years ago he wrote the report to the President on UNESCO, and since this report had evidently not been read any closer by the Legion members than the report by the Legion's own committee—which gave UNESCO a clean bill of health—Mr. Salomon was a bit discouraged.

He is a member of the United States National Committee for UNESCO, so we asked him to answer the questions on the Legion. He stated simply that he was still shocked by the behavior of the Legion, and that he had been told that less than 50 members of the Legion had read their own report which was made by a committee of six.

He held the report up to show that here were 43 carefully documented pages of information. He said he did not see how anyone reading the report could have any question in their mind on the subject of atheism or communism dominating UNESCO.

We had a little free time after the afternoon meeting and then at 5:30 I was interviewed briefly for radio and TV by two or three reporters. This was followed by a general press conference and when the regular reporters had finished their questioning the high school and college papers took over.

The representatives of the school papers had come in fairly large numbers. There must have been at least 20 of them and they asked good questions. We barely had time to eat our dinner before we were called for at the hotel to go to the auditorium where the evening meeting was slated to begin at eight p.m. It was an overflow meeting, with several hundred people sitting in rooms which were piped for sound from the auditorium. I think we certainly gained a number of new members.

On Saturday morning we again opened a state meeting and many people came in from the northern part of the state. There were at least seven chapters represented. After lunch these groups continued to meet with Mr. Eichelberger because Mr. Salomon and I had to leave to be on a TV panel for an interview summing up our visit.

Mr. Salomon, Miss Baillargeon and I were picked up by Mr. Salomon's cousin at the hotel at three o'clock and drove to Chicago, stopping for a few minutes at the home of Mr. Joseph Salomon who was driving us down.

After spending the night in Chicago, we shall proceed to Michigan City on Sunday right after lunch. There we will have a dinner and an evening meeting and then take the night train sometime after midnight to Detroit.

E. R.

(Copyright, 1955, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 8, 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.

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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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