Pearce and Perkins

Each year on "famous women night," women students of small, coeducational Geneva College (Beaver Falls, Pa.) select a celebrity to honor. The college, which is in the heart of Pennsylvania's steel and CIO area, has thus warmly welcomed such ladies as the late Amelia Earhart, Mrs. Martin Johnson. But it proved too hot last week for the famous woman whom students chose to honor this year--Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins.

When he learned that students had invited Secretary Perkins to the college, Geneva's psalm-singing* President McLeod Milligan Pearce last week hastily canceled the invitation, explained: "If Miss Perkins were not particularly identified with a labor movement, we would have been very glad to have her."

Retorted Madam Secretary: "It may interest you to know that one of my specialties is relieving tension. ... I hold pretty moderate views on [labor problems] and when I have an opportunity to discuss them I find that I generally allay suspicion and even modify ill-will and dislike."

*At Geneva, only Covenanter (reformed Presbyterian) college in the U. S., psalms are sung instead of hymns.

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