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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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good it was, because we had a State Employment Service and we didn't have much contact with the Federal Employment Service. There had been something anyhow. There was a gesture in the right direction. I never knew much of what they did, but it was at least a progressive step.

The Labor Department had a very small amount of money. They couldn't do much. Their principal activity was the administration of the immigration law, which burdened them with a lot of detail which had nothing to do with labor matters at all. All through the last four years of the Smith administration I just wrote off the federal Department of Labor as being totally uninterested in the things we were interested in, except for the Women's Division and the Children's Bureau which were good.

We got the information out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and always had great respect for them. Our statisticians in the New York State Department of Labor went to these statistical society meetings and there they met the government statisticians. They had respect for them. They kept good cost of living records. They kept a good tally on employment and unemployment - a very good sampling. They kept up the degree of employment from month to month. They had a very good tabulation of the changes in wages. That you could rely on. It was properly done. While they





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