a society where in theory anyone would be successful with the right attitude. Such feelings were especially common with those who had formerly had white collar jobs as Hickok found them "dumb with misery" as they faced unemployment. In New Orleans, a newspaper editor told Hickok "The whole white collar class are taking an awful beating. They're whipped, that's all. And it's bad". One unemployed engineer told her "I had to murder my pride" before applying for relief. In Alabama, a lumberman told her "It took me a month [to apply for relief]. I used to go down there every day or so and walk past the place again and again. I just couldn't make myself go in". One 28-year-old laid-off teacher in Texas, fired as she was the most junior teacher, dejectedly told her: "If I can't make a living, I'm just no good, I guess". The mayor of Toledo, Ohio told Hickok: "I have seen thousands of these defeated, discouraged, hopeless men and women, cringing and fawning as they come to ask for public aid. It is a spectacle of national degeneration". During her time with FERA, Hickok developed a dislike of reporters. In one report to Hopkins in 1934, she wrote, "Believe me, the next state administrator who lets out any publicity on me is going to get his head cracked". In February 1934, Time called her "a rotund lady with a husky voice, a peremptory manner, baggy clothes", a description that wounded Hickok. In a letter to Hopkins' secretary, she asked, "Why the Hell CAN'T they leave me alone?" Following the incident, Hickok and Roosevelt redoubled their efforts to keep their relationship out of the spotlight; on one occasion, Roosevelt wrote to her, "We must must be careful this summer & keep it out of the papers when we are off together." In April 1934, a Texas businessman told her that the solution to America's problems was fascism as he maintained democracy was doomed. Hickok told Hopkins that "Honestly, after nearly a year of travelling about this country, I'm almost forced to agree with him. If I were 20 years younger and weighed 75 pounds less, I think I'd start out to be Joan of Arc of the Fascist movement in the United States...I've been out on this trip now for a little more than two weeks. In all that time I've hardly met a single