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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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superintendent” in New York knows, it's a very interesting operation to watch the men working the pneumatic drills. They work in a great, open cut. They put these pneumatic drills on and drill down so many feet, then drill some more, then they finally blast. A terrific process of drilling into solid rock goes on.

We got very serious cases of that. Tom Curtis, their union representative, would bring them in. He would say, “Look, this man is sick. He's terrible sick.”

The doctors would say, “He's got tuberculosis.”

They practically always do have tuberculosis if they have silicosis. Tuberculosis normally follows silicosis. But then we had a lot of testimony offered that the tuberculosis was what caused the silicosis. They had the tuberculosis anyhow and the silicosis merely lit it up. Of course they brought in the reports of innumerable autopsies which showed that practically everybody had a touch of tuberculosis - a spot on their lungs. It never gives them any trouble, but when they die, if there's an autopsy made, they're very likely to find a spot of tuberculosis healed frequently in childhood. There was no further trouble. But if that was irritated by anything, it was stimulated.

So there was a great belief that if we covered silicosis under the Workmen's Compensation Law, we would be giving





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