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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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which was several years before 1940, I thought they were right and that we were pricing too many things.

We had to revise our whole pricing list at that time. We had found on the pricing list things like ladies' high buttoned shoes. The Department of Labor had been pricing the cost of ladies' high buttoned shoes for many years. It was on one of the original lists, and it had never been blocked out, although nobody wore high buttoned shoes any more. Of course, long- sleeved, or long-legged flannel or balbriggan underwear was also priced for women as well as men. Now, I'm told that workingmen in the colder parts of the country did wear long-legged and long-sleeved balbriggan underwear, but women, even in the poorest classes, had ceased to wear it, for one reason or another. But it was on the pricing list. A lot of other things that were out-moded were on it.

President Roosevelt used to laugh about that. Whenever anything was said about labor statistics to him, or in his presence, he invariably remembered the story that I had told him when I gave him a little resume of what we proposed to do when we revised our list way back in 1935. I had told him about finding ladies' high buttoned shoes on it. So whenever you said “labor statistics” to him, he'd say,





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