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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 542

strike in the first one.

People like William Green regretted all this. He bewailed all this, wrung his hands, thought it ought not to be, but there was nothing he could do about it. After all, these were the textile workers. They could do as they darned please. He would always join in urging them to build a solid organization and exhort Gorman not to stir up so much excitement. His advice would be to take the time to really get real members, because, of course, whatever little organization Gorman had built up in this flurry of the flying wedge would disintegrate within a month sometimes. They just didn't hold on. There was no solidity to it. Green, as an experienced trade unionist, saw the folly of that.

This got to be very distressing. It was peculiarly distressing because of the fact that the cotton textile industry was one of the sickest industries in the country. Since it was an industry competing in world markets and world trade, and since the price of cotton was related to the production in the cotton textile industry, and since the government was with its other hand stabilizing the price of cotton and trying to keep American cotton somewhere at a level where the people who raised it would not be at a total loss, it became a touchy point.





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