Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

A: No, I do not.
Q: Why were yau concerned with it?
A: Because I thought it was the best thing for the women in my area and
for the rest of the state.
Q: Did they call this to your attention in your area or your district?
A: I couldn't tell you whether they did or didn't. I could probably tell
you that after the bill was introduced, there were a lot of people in
my area, one in particular, who were very supportive of the concept.
Q: Yes. Which brings up the subject, how did you manage your mail in
the House, let's say in those days?
A: Well, in those days, we did not have any offices and we had nowhere to
work from. We dictated at our desk. We had a pool of stenographers and
you would get your mail and weed it out as to those letters that you felt
obliged to answer. I usually tried to answer all of my mail, every single
person who wrote me got some kind of an answer. If it were something that
I felt obliged to dictate on, to explain either a positive or a negative
position on a bill, I would do so, There were instances where you got
just tons of mail on a subject that would be on postcards or something
saying, "I favor House bill so and so and so and so." In that instance,
so that the person would know that you had received the mail, we had some
cards printed so that all your secretary had to do was to address it in
the name of the person to whom it was to be sent, in which you would say
either that you were opposed to the bill, and you let the people know that,
or you would say you were for it. We had some stock answers that we gave
in those instances. So at least their mail would be answered and it would
be communicated to them first that you had received it and secondly what
your position would be. There might be a bill on which you might say on a
card that you have it under study and you are going to wake a decisidn soon
before you voted on it, but that you would bear in mind the position that
they took at the time you voted.
Q: Did you receive many petitions for action?
A: Very few petitions for action.
Q: In 1965, Mrs. Saperstein and you plus 94 others introduced a bill on the
wages. Do you recall that one?
A: No. It may well have been the same bill that Kaplan had presented
before, I don't know.
Q: Yes, in 1959, 1965, 1967 and 1969, in all those years, it was introduced
and in most cases tabled. It didn't come to a vote, evidently. When a
bill . "