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

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WASHINGTON, Thursday—My brother came to dinner last night and we sat talking until fairly late and I didn't get started on my basket of mail as early as I intended. When Miss LeHand came in to say goodnight, she found me writing hard all over a letter, and I am quoting the last paragraph of that letter: "I have written Governor Murphy urging that he evict the sit-down strikers by tear gas if possible, if that is not effective by the use of arms. This is no time for peace. It is a time for action or the sit-down strike will spread to other industries depriving thousands of their right to work, for whom they wish and at what wage they wish. If Governor Murphy will not order the state militia of Michigan to evict the sit-down strikers, the federal troops should be sent to Flint for that purpose."

The writer is a woman and I searched my files to find if this same woman had written me any protest in the matter of intimidation of labor by spies. The papers have been fairly full of an investigation at present going on in Congress, bringing to the public notice certain practices which would seem to disregard the rights of human beings. But, on this subject the lady has been silent as far as I can discover, so I must decide that for her property rights are all important. Human rights mean so little that she is willing to cause bloodshed before every effort has been made to accomplish a peaceful settlement. A strange feeling for a woman.

I have just come back from an exhibition staged at Garfinkels department store by the Washington artists for the benefit of the flood sufferers. It is a small exhibition but they have done I think, a rather clever thing. Except where people insist on buying something which they wish to take away with them, the artists have placed a first bid on their own work and everyone coming in is asked to place a bid. No one will know until the end of the exhibition which is to last a week, whether their bid has acquired anything or not. One of Miss Hoyt's Spanish sketches attracted me very much and two or three other things, amongst them a very cunning bunny done in gray and white and looking somewhat like Copenhagen ware. Pottery, weaving and some very lovely book binding and block printing were also on exhibition.

This afternoon a number of groups of people are calling on me and at five o'clock the President and I will have to bid goodbye to the French Ambassador and Madame de Laboulaye. They are old friends and we hope that they will return as friends in the years to come, but we are sincerely sorry to see them go and can only hope that their return to their own country will be full of happiness.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 12, 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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • 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.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

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 February 11, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 11 February 1937, AERP, FDRL