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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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in front of the farms and the fields that they were supposed to till. It had been very disturbing and distressing, but eventually they had won something out of it.

Some other learned fellow that likes to do research work, I forget who, told me that this had also occurred in England during the Middle Ages. It seems that during the Corn Law riots something of the sort had happened in one place. Someone dug cut for me the information that it had been a very ancient Chinese custom, that the Chinese had done that when all else failed, that the Chinese had never been negotiators, but had planted themselves firmly on the steps of their masters' premises, or in the roadway, and refused to give way. That had been an effective method of protest by otherwise helpless people, and an effective method of winning a point, which they certainly had no organization to win. They were not organized workers, but just peasants, or otherwise exploited people.

I take it that these people who went on strike in Flint didn't know anything about all this, and that so far as they were concerned it was a spontaneous movement. But I don't think that they were entirely





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