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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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science as he'd advised me to. But following his advice I tried to read. I was in a university town at Lake Forest, Illinois, and had access to a large library. I read everything that was on the shelves. I read Henry George's Progress and Poverty, and that of course was very heretical economics. I read Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London. I read How the Other Half Lives. I don't think I read Thorstein Veblen then, though I met Veblen at that time as he was teaching at the University of Chicago. I'm not sure he had published The Theory of the Leisure Class at that time, though he may have. I read a lot of books published by the professors at Wisconsin and Chicago University.

Then a friend of mine - a young woman with whom I had made an acquaintance - had an aunt who was on the board of directors of Hull House. We used to go in and see the aunt, Mrs. L. A. Coonley Ward, frequently when we were in Chicago. We were both reading these same things and she suggested that we both go and spend our Christmas vacation at Hull House, which we did. We wanted to see how the other half lived, and we did. That, of course, attracted our attention to some very definite realities. Later I went to Hull House and to Chicago Community Settlement to stay for a longer period of time.

The women's trade unions were just in the formative





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