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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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industries had expanded they had brought in immigrant people. As I remember it, they were mostly Italians. There might have been some Poles, but my memory is that a great many Italians had been brought in, who are good, competent metal workers always. That made the traditional difference that springs up in American communities when a lot of immigrants arrive to do the work that has formerly been done wholly by the local native-born population - the farmers' sons and daughters, and the village people. There weren't enough of them to do the work, so there was no jealousy of them because they held a job, but there was just a new element in the community. It was an element that was totally unrelated to and foreign to the local Rome community. More and more the local village people and the local farm people as they came into the copper industries tended to take the office jobs, the superintendents, the foremen and that kind of thing. That would be what they would be trained for, although not exclusively. There were plenty of good American names working alongside the foreigners too.

This recent millionairism that had struck the copper manufacturers of Rome had created a great rift in the community, because it had never had any millionaires. Even the one or two old families that had had the copper business were not millionaires. They lived in their grandfathers' houses





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