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This association with these men proved to be very useful. It also proved to be a method of making friends for Governor Smith which I did not wholly realize when I started. But gradually their animosity toward him wore down. They began to like him. He'd be asked to their annual meetings. He made some very fine speeches at the annual meetings of the Associated Industries. It proved to be good politics as well as a good technique.
I finally developed in the Department a legislative conference. I don't know whether I would do it again because it was an awful lot of work, but at the moment it worked very well. The trade unions had grown stronger. Their legislative activities were not now confined to such as John M. O'Hanlon and O. Fitzgerald would put through up at Albany. Separate unions had more individual ideas about what they would like for legislation. I may say that I don't think that was accident. We tended to give them some leadership and to indicate what they ought to like. We were greatly assisted in this by the Women's Trade Union League which had some very superior women in its membership and its leadership, who because they were trade unionists had a voice in the affairs of their trade unions, but were on the whole a little more concerned with conditions in general than they were with whether the union makes so much money or gets so
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