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

[Original version of the column. Text in red are tagged with <sic> (needs correction); text in purple are tagged with <orig> (needs regularization); and text in blue are tagged names of persons or organizations. View emended version]

      

HYDE PARK, Thursday—I was interested in an account the other day of a report made by the Brookings Institute to the Senate Committee on Government Reorganization. According to the newspaper report that I read, they recommended that the Secret Service and the Postal Inspectors Force be merged with the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice.

There has been a great deal said lately about the consolidation of this and that, and I think there is no question but what many things should be consolidated in the interests of efficiency.

The different forces, however, which are doing secret service work, or investigation of different kinds are not the parts of the government which it would seem wise to me to consolidate. There have grown up under various forms of government in different parts of the world, secret investigation branches under one head, and they times have practically superseded all the other arms of the government and have spread terror among the population. It seems to me that it is better for us to have these necessary forces divided up under different department heads. There may be a certain amount of rivalry but that will do no harm, and if the heads have the proper spirit of cooperation the men themselves will understand that when they need to assist each other, they should do so in the interests of law and order and justice which they are all serving. As long as they remain separate there will, however, be no danger of a secret octupus growing up to control in harmful ways.

There were a few terrible seconds in my broadcast last night, for in some inconcieveable way, a page disappeared from my script. If you are not paying any attention to a script, it is perfectly easy because your mind keeps on following your train of thought and you can say what you have to say without anything before you, but where they make you write it down and something happens to what you have written, it takes you a second or two to collect your thoughts and start in again. I imagine these seconds seemed longer to us than they did to the radio audience. I am off the air now for an indefinite period, and I hope I am going to be able to spend a good deal of time quietly here.

We drove back last night, Miss Dickerman, Mrs. Scheider and I, after dining in New York, and reached here about eleven-forty-five. I shall leave on the midnight train from New York tonight to be at Senator Robinson's funeral tomorrow in Washington. Poor Mrs. Robinson is coming back from Arkansas and I can well imagine what her journey must be.

I think the story of the Russian fliers presenting their printed request to their startled ranch host for: "Bath", " East ", and "Sleep", is very amusing. Our congratulations go to them on their successful landing.

I still search the papers every day for news of Amelia Earhart but I am afraid there is little hope of hearing anything encouraging.

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 16, 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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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate 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.

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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 July 15, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 15 July 1937, AERP, FDRL