The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
MARCH 21, 1950
[This column has emendations. View original version]
NEW YORK, Monday—Saturday at Hyde Park was windy, but the little dogs and two of my guests walked over to the farm in spite of the cold to view my two new acquisitions. I couldn't ask for a nicer pair of Hampshire hogs than were sent me from Indiana.
I noticed them in the fields when I was in Indiana on my lecture trip. I was told they made particularly good bacon, so I decided that we should acquire a couple on the farm. We are enjoying now some very good pork and ham from the pigs we had, but I am looking forward to someday having Hampshire bacon.
I asked a young friend who spent the weekend with us if she would try to think up some good names for our two new pigs. She hasn't turned in any suggestions as yet.
While we were over to the farm we also looked over the cows. I hadn't visited them for a long while. They came through the winter looking in fine shape and much of the young stock is very promising. I hope someday we will have a really first-class dairy. Our farmer, Lloyd Forcier, seems very proud of them and, of course, that is why they are in such good condition.
I hated to leave yesterday morning, for the wind had died down and the sky was as blue as it could be when the dogs and I took our walk before breakfast. I had to get down to New York City for the television-radio program yesterday afternoon, however.
Incidentally, I think I should clarify how this program is run. The ideas are all started in the firm of Roosevelt and Jones. Naturally, they tell me who they are asking to have tea with me and what they plan to discuss, but, since it is a National Broadcasting Company service program, NBC has the final say.
There was some confusion in the minds of the public as to the real subject of discussion as originally planned for yesterday. On this program I will often have people whom I do not like at all and with whom I may not agree in any way, because I believe that the public should hear controversial opinions expressed by the people who hold them.
The program is so arranged that each person has an opportunity to make a preliminary statement and in the discussion that follows I make every effort to allow each person to express the points that he wishes to make. I try not to let any one person hold the floor too long. This is not a forum for any one individual. It is a brief half hour in which opposing points of view are presented.
They may be minority points of view or majority points of view. But they should all have a hearing and surely the public is not afraid of listening to viewpoints with which they do not agree when they are trying to find out what is the general thinking of any group, large or small, in the United States.
I have never been afraid of the American people. I have always felt they were able to form their own judgments and in the end that the majority would think straight. I don't believe in suppressing or keeping from people points of view that are held even by minorities.
I think I will always have confidence in the common sense and clear judgment of the American people as a whole if they hear all sides of any question. Above everything else, we must guard our freedoms, and that means that all must have a right to be heard. When we begin to discriminate we can never tell where the discrimination may end.
E. R.
(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, March 21, 1950
Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
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 May 2, 2022.
HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.
TMs, AERP, FDRL