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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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the collapse of '29, until really the next year, because the collapse of '29 was largely financial. The stock market went to pieces, but you don't get the full industrial and business results for six months before you begin to be aware that there is less employment and less turnover. Then things began to slide rapidly. So by the fall of '30 we were awfully aware of it. It was in the early thirties that you began to get these runaway factories, although there had been some runaways from Massachusetts before, but not very much.

The boot and shoe industry was an example of this. The owner of the factory in that industry never owns the machinery. The United Boot and Shoe machinery Company has owned the patents on all boot and shoe making machinery for many, many years. It goes back practically to the beginning of the machine-made shoe. So many of these manufacturers were able to just pick up and move on.

At any rate, I realized when I was made Secretary of Labor that we needed national wage and hour legislation in order to prevent all that. However, all the court decisions had been to the effect that the regulation of these things did not promote commerce between the states. In fact, it did the opposite. They interfered





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