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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Sure, children can go to work, but you've got to have this, this and this protection.” We knew more about that. The reason, for instance, that the labor people are concerned about child labor is because child labor competes with them, the adult laborers, and brings down the wages of adult laborers. At that moment there was no danger of that, because there were fewer adult laborers than they needed, so if child labor was needed for the defense project, all right. They couldn't conceive of a regulation that made children have a rest period during the day, or that provided for their going to school a part of each year, or that provided for special guarding of machinery, not permitting them to work on certain dangerous jobs. Those things were set up by those who thought professionally about the welfare of the community, and in particular the welfare of the children of the community.

The same thing was true with regard to wages and hours. Except where they had a special prejudice, they would have set aside all kinds of regulations that we'd had in the past. It was interesting to note that.

At any rate, there was no particular competition between our people and Hillman's people, and that, I think, was due to the fact that we had Tracy in there as number two man. Hillman made him his number two man right away, and he went with Hillman wherever he want. I think it was a pretty good arrangement.





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