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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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as a witness about fire, about accident, about sanitation, about various things. Finally I became an investigator for them and then I became kind of in charge of investigations. We organized investigations all over the state. The trick of it really was to get members of the commission to go themselves and see at least some of the factories. For that purpose I, and a number of others, would scout out ahead, see various factories in various places, see what they showed, what they pointed up. Then we'd pick out the ones that were illustrative of various points of various problems and arrange to get the members of the commission, or some part of them, there.

Alfred Smith said it was the greatest education he'd ever had. He had no idea life was like that. He'd grown up in the slums of New York, but he didn't know what factory life was like. Neither did any of them. It was an astonishment for them to see the frightfully filthy conditions, the obvious fire hazards and the very great accident hazards. We took them to everything before we got through. As late as 1913 or '14 we must have taken them out to Auburn to see women working on the night shifts and coming off the night shifts.

We kept this commission alive for a number of years. I think they made their final report in '15, or if they





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