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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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years old. He read it for pleasure. People today don't do that, but they don't get that kind of education when they're twelve. I don't now read Greek for pleasure because my life is much more occupied. Today what with the automobile and the telephone we haven't any leisure. My father was quite a scholar in the field of law.

I think in my senior year in college I took a course which was called American Economic History. That was the first taste I'd had of economics. My teacher was Annah May Soule. She was a considerable scholar and she had a brilliant idea of having a class of perfectly innocent girls - that is, innocent of the industrial process - go and look at some factories that were not too far distant from the college. We went to look at paper mills, textile mills, and so forth. I was astonished and fascinated by what I saw. I think she also opened the door to the idea that there were some people much poorer than other people; that not everybody had comfort and security; and that the lack of comfort and security in some people was not solely due to the fact that they drank, which had been the prevailing view in my parental society.

I don't know whether other girls in the class were struck the way I was. People in college didn't converse about their classes in those days as they do now. The





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