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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Governor right away to make sure the Governor waited for my word. The way you get the state police is for a local authority to let the Governor know that there's a state of public disorder and that the local police are not adequate to handle it. Only the local officials can do that. They request the state police and if the Governor believes them and has no other information, he may send in the state police.

The employers had as a counsel a man from Utica named Harvey Ferris - a Democrat who had been a member of the Legislature earlier and whom I knew as a member of the Senate. He was a Democrat and had been a member of one of the upstate county committees. He had known, of course, Smith, Wagner and all those men, although he was an upstate Democrat. I had known him. They had retained him as a lawyer. He was a very good lawyer. These were his clients. When I heard that he was their lawyer, I felt very comfortable, because I felt that I could have a good talk with Ferris and we had a method of approach to these very hard-boiled employers who weren't going to see any committees or confer with the men about anything.

I discovered, within the five or six hours that I was there, that Ferris had already been in touch with the Governor and had requested the state police. He had done more than that.





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