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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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four weeks. He hadn't paid her just because he didn't want to. I was sent off to collect the money. I collected it with the best arguments, the best devices, and the best grace I could. I remember a favorite device of mine was to threaten to tell his landlord that he didn't pay wages. Nobody told me to say that. I just thought of it when I found that the employer was not going to pay Mrs. Kaplowitz. he certainly wasn't going to pay her at the behest of any young squirt from New England like me. What business had I got in this affair anyhow? Of course I didn't have any business. I was intervening in the cause of social justice and because somebody at Hull House thought I ought to. She was one of the Hull House clients that couldn't get her wages, the baby was sick and they didn't have any money to buy bread.

I collected wages for a good many people who hadn't been paid. I learned out of that that they didn't always get paid. Of course, the plumbers and the carpenters did get paid. I began to see that there was a reason for this trade union organization. There was a strong group that would collect the money. You didn't have to go get a young social worker from Hull House to collect the money. The union would see that the wages were paid on time and paid when they were earned.





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