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

      

NEW YORK—In spite of gray skies, we decided to have the Wiltwyck School picnic Saturday morning.

It was not actually raining, as it was on Thursday and Friday, and we hoped it would hold off until after the children had at least eaten their picnic lunch, as they then could go over to the library. Only once before have we had the picnic when it rained, and then we fed the children under every shelter we could find, not having any rooms big enough to hold them all.

Now there are more boys in the school than there were then, and while some 30 had gone home because of the delays, we still had between 125 and 130 which, together with our own family and guests, brought the gathering up to well over 150 people who had to be served.

As a rule, after they have eaten—and these youngsters really eat—they sit under the trees and I read them a story. At their request, it is usually the same one, Kipling's "How the Elephant Got His Trunk." The boys who have been there before tell the new boys, and they want to be proved correct, so they demand the same story and practically the same food.

Hot dogs usually run two to three apiece and some boys have been known to eat four. This year I gave them potato chips instead of macaroni, because I thought it would be easier to manage. They always have corn on the cob, which we put in our deep freeze every season, planning ahead for the picnic of the coming year.

Two kinds of salads—potato and vegetable—and then ice cream and cupcakes, with at least two helpings all around, with gallons of milk and coffee for the grownups, are on the menu from year to year.

Then we have games, for which little bundles of lollipops are the prizes. Then they go over to visit the Memorial Library.

That ends the day's outing for the boys, but I know it means a good deal to them, for whenever I see them during the year, they ask me if we are going to have the picnic when summer comes.

Everybody must be sympathetic with the poor mother who is waiting so anxiously in the hope that her kidnaped baby will be returned to her.

It seems incredible that anyone could withstand her pleadings.

I have never been able to understand the kind of person who could take a helpless child and hold him or her for ransom. Yet there have been many of these cases. And, as a rule, if money was the object, the kidnaper rarely achieved his objective, because if he takes the money, he is bound to be caught. The result is that he rarely takes the money.

If he is not caught, one seldom knows what happens to the child. It seems to me one of the most cruel of all crimes.

It is to be hoped that the steel strike will not be allowed to last for a very long time.

Some of the newspapers reported that neither the companies, which have been getting very high prices—perhaps higher returns than any other industry—nor the unions, which have on the whole kept their rate of wages very high, want a careful investigation and report on the industry as a whole.

If that is so, and the government seriously makes a move to step in, we may see a fairly quick settlement.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1956, By United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 [ index ]
         English poet, novelist, and journalist
         [ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC ]
Organizations
Geographic
  • New York (N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 10, 1956

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

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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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text 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 UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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