Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 444

the thread that they used. Everyone had to stay together and they couldn't do that unless they belonged to the union. A union was strong and a union would help them all stand together. The bosses were cruel. The bosses would grind down the faces of the poor.

It was that kind of talk. It seemed like an appeal to prejudice and was very emotional, but it just barely got by to these people. I realized afterwards that without an emotional appeal nothing got by to them because they were pretty well worn down. They were tired and didn't have much energy left.

I was confused about the causes of poverty and I said to young Graham Taylor one Sunday, after we'd been conducting a pleasant Sunday afternoon, as they called it - entertainment for the neighborhood, - “what is the trouble? What is the matter? How can we cure this? Is this going to go on forever, these people being so poor that we have to give out free milk, we have to have free nursing services, the babies die, there's nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon but get drunk? What is the matter? What can be done? What should be done?”

I remember this blond young man pounding his fist and saying, “The only answer to this is the organization of all the working people into trade unions.”





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help