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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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This was the explanation that men like George Googe and Nance gave me, Googe being a very analytical and intelligent man. He laid it out to me. I remember his saying to me, “You must remember that the southern mind, which we are operating with here in these textile mills, is a mind that has developed under frustrations, and that although we believe we have buried the effects of the War Between the States, actually there is an undercurrent of resentment that runs through all of the native American working people of these southern states. There has been a policy for many years among southern textile mill owners and operators, which originally seemed like a good policy to the people affected by it, of employing only what they call ‘our own people.’ That is, they furnish work in their textile mill to the poor white people who need work and wages since they were deprived of the jobs that they formerly held before the War Between the States as overseers, accountants, petty purchasing agents, things of that sort, in connection with the plantation system. The plantation system being gone, there is no work for them in that way. Insofar as they were landowners and cotton raisers themselves, they are now in competition with a class of tenants with a low standard of living. They feel the pinch of that.”





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