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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that the cases that were decided in a liberal manner with a liberal award made when taken to the courts were sustained by the courts. He never heard about it. There was no digest of the court decisions made available to him. He just blundered along as best as he could. There never had been a referee's conference.

It was that kind of technique that I introduced. It was a stirring-up process. When it comes to accomplishment, it's very hard to measure accomplishment except that things were growing better. There was a better operation, better work was done, more liberal awards were made, there was better inspection and better enforcement. You'd still wake up in the night and say, “What if there should be a fire? How do I know that we have covered everything?” You just didn't know. You knew that anything might happen.

As a matter of fact, we had some narrow escapes. We had some accidents happen where just by good fortune there wasn't a catastrophe and a lot of people injured or killed. Yet it was a lesson to you. We finally got to using those as very pointed lessons to point up to factory inspectors generally what the hazard was, what ought to be done, what the chances would have been and so forth.

It's funny that I can't remember that period better. Of course it was only two years. Smith was defeated the





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