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| | When the [[Great Depression]] hit, New York State Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Hopkins to run the first state relief organization in the nation – the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Hopkins and [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs. | | When the [[Great Depression]] hit, New York State Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Hopkins to run the first state relief organization in the nation – the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Hopkins and [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs. |
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| − | ===Personal life===
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| − | Hopkins married as a young man a fellow welfare worker. They had three sons. In 1930 his wife filed suit against him for divorce in New York State, the charge being infidelity. She secured the divorce and an order for the payment of $5,000 a year in alimony. Hopkins was making $10,000 a year at the time. Shortly after the divorce, he took a second wife. He became WPA Administrator at a salary of $10,000 a year. [[Marquis W. Childs]], in an article in the ''[[Saturday Evening Post]]'' of April 19 and 26, 1941, said Hopkins was hard pressed for funds under the circumstances and was having a difficult time meeting the alimony payments to his first wife. To cure this situation, social workers were brought together to raise a fund of $5,000 a year to take care of Hopkins' alimony. A number of small salaried little social welfare workers were assessed to pay Hopkins' obligation to support his children. In theory the money was collected to pay him for lectures. This arrangement went on for two years. Then in January, 1936, his salary was raised to $12,000 and the welfare workers were relieved of the burden of Hopkins' alimony.
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| − | Childs relates in the same article, that during those WPA days, Hopkins, who was so pressed for funds was, with the men around him, playing poker with losses so stiff they ran to $500 or $600 an evening and that he found the time and the means to spend weekends in the homes wealthy friends and to make frequent visits to the race tracks at Saratoga, Pimlico and Warrenton. ''[[Life magazine]]'' has printed much the same stories about him.
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| − | According to Mr. Felix Belair in an article in ''Life'', Postmaster General Walker, John D. Hertz, and other millionaire friends, raised a purse to pay Hopkins $5,000 a year as head of Franklin D. Roosevelt's library at [[Hyde Park]]. When the [[Lend Lease]] act was voted the President arranged a $10,000 a year salary for Hopkins under the Lend Lease program. During this period Tom Beck, the head of the CrowellCollier Publishing Company, began paying him $5,000 a piece for seven or eight articles in the American Magazine over a period of several years for articles written in Hopkins name. In the meantime, he had moved into the White House where he enjoyed the additional privilege of free board and lodging. His second wife had died and his daughter by this marriage lived with him in the White House. When Hopkins and his third wife later moved to Georgetown, his daughter, after remaining with them a while, went back to the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt writes how she fretted about the lonely life of this child and spoke to Hopkins about it. He said to her: "That's totally unimportant. The only thing that is important is to win the war." He found plenty of time, however, to pursue at intervals his favorite forms of diversions in the night clubs of New York and Washington.
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