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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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thing that's the matter in labor troubles is the degradation of the human being. That resentment against that attempt to degrade and to treat a man or a group of men as though they were nothing is a good deal at the basis of what riles up in them and makes for all the violence and disturbances, keeping it from being an orderly business-like negotiation for wages and hours.

We then asked the lawyer for the others to say what he had to say. We asked the employers to state their views and they said they would speak through their lawyer. This, of course, is another thing that annoys the working people beyond words. Grown men who own the factories won't say for themselves what they think and what they will do, but shut their mouths tight, look at the floor and get a lawyer to do their talking for them. There again is a kind of denial of the basic, fundamental human relationship. They're always deeply offended by that custom of men insisting on being heard through their lawyer.

Their lawyer got up and said what they would not do. They would not pay these wages. They were preposterous. There was no reason to explain why. The employer was not making enough money to justify it. Besides that wasn't the scale of wages. That wasn't the way you measured wages. They weren't going to do any such thing. They had previously





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