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Looking back on it now, this organization that I said was sort of namby-pamby - the International Association of Governmental Labor Officials - really did give you some good points. You met the Labor Commissioners. If the labor laws were administrated by a commission, you met some of the Commissioners. You met practically always whatever there was in the way of factory inspection services. You met them. You got to know them. You got to know their points of view. You got to know who was progressive in what states and where they were making headway. Of course, we all got up and boasted about our laws and what we had been able to do. Some of them got up and boasted about what they had been able to keep from becoming law. Some of them didn't want any labor laws.
Wisconsin and Massachusetts were as progressive as New York. Of course, both of them were much smaller states, with much smaller populations and a much smaller industrial concentration. Massachusetts, nevertheless, had a minimum wage act and a minimum wage board for women long before we were able to get anything of the sort. We drew most of our empirical knowledge about what can be accomplished by minimum wage boards from the Massachusetts experience. When we set them up in New York State, we set them up more
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