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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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with me. They all began to smile in the good Balian style. You speak to them fairly, and all will understand each other. It was very nice. The rocks weren't for me. That was perfectly clear. It was just fine that the Governor had sent somebody. The Commissioner was coming. They didn't think I was the harbinger of the troops. They were nice, innocent fellows, who didn't mean any harm, although they had done a lot of harm and were potentially very hazardous, as I found out later, because they were very angry and didn't have a union. They had never had a union. This was one of the few spontaneous strikes I ever saw. The union organizers like Johnny Flynn and Bill Collins came in later when they heard there was trouble. They came in to try to handle it and make some sense out of it and to build an organization too. It was a real spontaneous strike. They were mad, everything had gone wrong. They didn't get their wages raised. They were earning less than anybody in the United States doing the same kind of work. The hours had been lengthened without any compensatory pay and so forth and so on. They knew at the same time that their employers had made fortunes. They could see the evidences of the fortunes in the fine new houses and snappy automobiles which they were driving around, which were a new experience for Rome - both the





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