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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 564

whether he went to the five day week or not. It was a rigid thirty hours with no variation, no possibility or modification, no difference between one industry and another industry, no recognition of the complicated differences between the necessarily continuous industries and the industries which are not necessarily continuous, no recognition of the complications that arise in an industry which has to be responsive to the forces of nature over which man's laws have no control, such as the dairy industry. I remember making a speech once saying that nobody had yet invented a six hour cow. You have to milk the cow at the right time. You can't let it go. It can't be postponed to the next shift without interfering with the milk supply. You've got to milk them when they come in from the pasture. Your whole dairy industry depends upon that. The milk has to be separated when it comes in. I remember using that illustration.

No account was taken in this bill of the variation in the supply of labor available to different industries. The dairy industry, for instance, is one of those that doesn't have a very ready supply of labor, because they have to be located in remote country districts where they haven't got great pools of the unemployed ordinarily. Of course, in the depression time they had plenty of labor





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