Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 654

foreign country. The United States is a foreign country. I'm interested in it, but not responsible for it. Whereas, the activities of the state in which you reside are important. That's your country.

We explored this pattern of compact. We made no final agreements as to what we should do, except that each state would attempt to develop some pattern of treating unemployment and each state would attempt to develop for itself an approach to unemployment insurance. I believe that if Roosevelt had not been elected President, had continued to be Governor, we would have gone on into a pattern of having unemployment insurance laws state by state the way we have workmen's compensation laws state by state. We would have begun with the principal industrial state which felt the pinch of unemployment first. That was what I had in mind and that I think is what would have been done. It would certainly have been started. Whether we could have gotten a law passed I don't know, but we would have begun on that project. Winant would have begun on it. There would have been several states where it certainly would have been begun. There would have been education throughout the states. That's what we would have had.

Of course, it would have been a difficult pattern to





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help