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Notable New     Yorkers
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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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steel industry, to any plant in the steel industry, or that the conditions should be written into the bid, because the wages were already at a very high level. However, I was out-talked. The union was anxious for us to fix a minimum wage at the level that they had established with the few companies with which they had negotiated a contract. Those wages were not paid in all steel mills, but a very good wage was paid everywhere. The stickler was trying to find what was the prevailing wage - the wage paid in the union organized plants, or in the others. I had been holding that the law didn't apply to steel.

As I've said, the first interview I had while the bill was first being considered was with a steel manufacturer, a very good small manufacturer in Pennsylvania making a special quality of steel. I've always been interested in that man. I don't remember the name of the company, but it was a small, old company, pre-Revolutionary. They had old iron ore deposits, old furnaces, and so on. Of course, they were now a modern mill, but it was a small mill in a small community, employing almost entirely local labor, actively run and operated by the owners. It was a family property. The stock had never been on the market. The brothers ran the mill. They knew how to make steel just as well as their steelmaster did. They didn't have to go hire a steelmaster. They were steelmasters themselves. They made a special type of





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