hs of the depression, she campaigned against sweatshops. She urged women to shop where decent working conditions were provided. She called for the elimination of child labor and advocated more money for teachers' salaries. On the eve of the World Economic Conference, with foreign dignitaries trooping in and out of the White House, she addressed her press conference with an anit-isolationist plea whose intensity impressed the hard-bitten press corps. By the end of Roosvelt's first year, the mood of the country had changed. Eleanor shared in the adulation that flowed toward the White House from a reviving people. But it was more than that. She as much as her husband had come to personify the Roosvelt era. Bess Furman had ended her story about Mrs. Roosevelt's debut as first lady with "Washington had never; seen the like-a social transformation had taken place with the New Deal." And Cissy Patterson, the publisher of the Washington Herald, whom Eleanor had known in her debutante days, ended an interview with Eleanor on an unusual note of admiration: "Mrs. Roosevelt had solved the problem of living better than any woman I have ever known." Her days seemed to be planned so as never to allow her to be alone, and when she was alone she immersed herlsf in the papers. There were reports and manuscripts to read, articles an leattre tobe written, the latter in the thousands, many to friends and children. Long after everyone but the Secret Service agents had gone to sleep, she worked at her desk. It was as if she discovered her inner voice in thes dialogues with the people seh loved. She defined herself in relation to other people. "We are the product ...
