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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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was more or less a spur of the moment thought with him. After he had thought about it, he wrote a letter to me or to Mary and said that the more he thought of it the more he thought it was very good and he suggested that we look into it, which we did. There was nothing more to look into. The question was whether the legal authorities of the government would say it was all right. Every lawyer that I spoke to about it said that he could see no objection, no constitutional objection, to it, that certainly the government had the right to set any conditions it chose as to the goods that it bought.

Felix's only idea, and our idea, was that all that would do was to be a kind of leverage. If the government was requiring that no children under fifteen be employed on goods made for it, if the government was requiring that eight hours a day was to be the maximum amount of hours worked on any goods or articles produced for its purchase, and that the minimum wages should be a certain amount, that workmen's compensation laws, safety and accident prevention provisions should be made a part of the contract, if all that was done in government purchases, it would encourage, would set a standard, for the adoption of such practices by all competitors, by all bidders on government contracts, and would at least set up a standard





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