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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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bit of unemployment, which fortunately didn't last long, right after the World War in the '20s. I was concerned about it, although it wasn't showing up very alarmingly in statistics, as reported through the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because it was sporadic. People would be out of work. Then they'd be back. They'd be out of work somewhere else. Then they'd be back. It was going on all the time, so that in any community where you went you heard about the unemployment. You heard that this or that mill was closing down.

In a bulletin of the Department I raised the question about this creeping unemployment, how serious it was and what could be done to overcome it. I talked it over with some of my friends in the Merchants Association and I got their backing and cooperation for the idea that we should make a study. I think we got money from the Spelman Foundation, though I may be wrong about that. Anyhow, some private money was contributed, some public money was put in, the Commissioner assented, the Governor assented and we got two very decent young men who had just come down from college - one from Yale and one from somewhere else - to make this study.

It was very good indeed. The results of it were published. Although the unemployment petered out and didn't become an issue then, or at least didn't become a long-time issue because it was followed by the big inflationary boom,





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