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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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areas of the whole country with great suffering. The coal mine owners were suffering too. They were frantic, almost out of their minds with worry. They were suffering terribly, having had no profits in years. Much of whatever else they had was going into just paying the cost of keeping the mines from filling up with water. They were held up on their introduction of machinery, which had been a project ten years earlier. They had nothing to operate with. Also because industry was down, the demand for the coal was down.

How this movement got started, I don't know. Of course, it's partly the vanity of the miners who always think they are a superior breed anyhow. If anybody's going to have anything, the miners always want to have it first. If a code was a good thing, then the miners wondered why they began with the textile workers, why didn't they begin with them. Of course, the reason we began with the textile employees was because the textile employers, through the National Cotton Textile Institute, were already in sympathy with this plan for an NRA and practically had a code ready. They had analyzed their own industry knowing it was sick and they had proposals for a code ready almost immediately. That was why they got the first code. Steel got the second code because by the same token the steel industry, or at least a certain portion of it, had analyzed its troubles and was ready for a code.





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