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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I said, “Really, you think that will overcome all this?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “If every working man and woman would join a trade union then the wages would be sufficient to support people and then the families would be able to look after themselves and there would not be this necessity for these various services that go on through the charity societies, the settlements and so forth.”

This was an absolutely new idea to me. I'd never had any connection with this. I was a young person striving to learn and I'd never heard anybody say it that way. I had never heard a trade union organizer speak before. During at least that year I had had a great exposure to trade union organization because it was going on all around the city of Chicago, particularly a drive to these unorganized, very low-paid, truly exploited people. The carpenters, the plumbers and the brick layers were organized. They were no bother to anybody. They didn't work for nothing. They collected their pay.

We literally had examples of people who had done weeks of work and couldn't collect their pay. As a young worker, not expert enough to do any real social work, one of the things I was told to do was to go around and see the employer of old Mrs. Kaplowitz who hadn't paid her for





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