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"Government cannot live by taxes alone, or by jobs alone or even by roads alone. Government, too, must have qualities of the spirit. Truth and justice and fairness and unselfish service are some of these. Without these qualities there is no worthwhile leadership, and we grapple and grope in a moral wilderness." A Constitutional. In that spirit, Collins pitched into the job of running the government of a state in transition. He gets up at 7 o'clock, likes to have some of his staff meet him at his home for an hour's work. "Once we get to the capitol," he says, "it's hard to get together." Collins describes himself as "constitutionally incapable of working by the clock.
I have to gear my work to the job at hand. If that requires getting up before dawn and working through till midnight, then that's the way I do it. But if there's nothing pressing the next day, then I'm likely to be an hour late getting to the office and an hour early leaving it. I'm one of those unfortunate men who have to have pressure to work well. So instead of efficiently spreading my work out and doing it on a schedule, I tend to let it pile up and do it all at once. I know it's terribly hard on my family and my staff, but it's too late to change now." Once a month he goes on a statewide radio-TV hookup to report on the $100 million-a-year public business that he runs. Handsome and easy-mannered, with . a personality made for TV, he refuses to use a script. He chats about a variety of governmental subjects, reads and answers some of his mail over the air and, to the amazement of the station crew, manages to wind up each impromptu broadcast on the second.
One morning, he got back from a Florida-selling trip to New York, window-shopped in Jacksonville, then set out for Tallahassee in his black Cadillac. During the two-hour ride he framed a speech for the next day, made a decision on the appointment of a new sheriff, signed papers and discussed an upcoming meeting of the Merit System Council (he is trying to give more than 5,000 state employees civil-service protection). Halfway home, he asked the driver to stop at a roadside lunch stand. Roy (as the proprietor addressed him) gulped his coffee fast, wandered out and down the street. His driver, used to his habits, picked the governor up three blocks away; he was deep in conversation with two oldsters sitting in front of a hardware store. "I need the exercise," said Collins, "and it gives me a chance to talk to people."
He lunched at the Grove, commiserated with his five-year-old daughter Darby over the illness of a doll, went to his office, where he found the press demanding a comment on Adlai Stevenson's visit to Florida. Said Collins: "I am not endorsing any Democratic candidate, as you know, but if you were to ask me who the next President of the U.S. was going to be, I'd answer: Mr. Stevenson."
When the reporters had cleared out, he swore in the sheriff, telling him: "The main thing I want you to understand is that I appointed you because you are a good citizen, not because you are the friend of a friend, and you are not beholden to me or anyone else but the people of your county."