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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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unpredictability of what they do, was that they were prevailingly young. When I pointed out to Chrysler and Alfred Sloan that twenty-eight was the average age, it made things more understandable. The companies had a positive rule against hiring anybody after forty and of keeping anybody in their employment after forty-five. That, of course, was what contributed to this extreme youth. I pointed out to them that at twenty-eight a man has reached his full physical powers, but he hasn't yet had the life experience and discipline which makes him cautious and sober and gives him good judgment in what he does. They had hired deliberately a large group of people at the peak of their physical powers and at the peak of their recklessness. They were reaping this harvest in the type and excitement of the strikes. However, it was some years later that I pointed that out.

At any rate, the automobile workers had not been successfully organized by anybody, partly because they didn't want to be organized, and partly because it was difficult to do so.

The machinists and the metal polishers had probably been the primary people who attempted to organize among the automobile workers, both of them old, well organized unions. There was a feeling among the machinists that a





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