Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 731

were well-built, well-planned and well-located. They had been located, according to her, so that they were convenient to the public transportation lines and to the general area where the people who worked in them were likely to be living. Her theory was that women could work there and work easily at night. They wouldn't be a long way from home.

On close scrutiny one realized that there was nothing so remarkable about the working conditions, although she had told us that they were really remarkable and that everything was done for the comfort of the employees, that their wages were magnificent and their hours were short, so forth and so on. I had thought that it would probably be something like Mrs. Crapsey's factory in Rochester, New York, which was really kind of a lady's family affair. This was much larger and it was not so remarkable. It was just run like any other factory really. The wages were not good at all judged by New York standards. I don't recall now what they were, but they were below what we would have considered the level.

Of course, there was absolutely no union. I asked her if there was a union and she said, “Certainly not. No indeed. There's nothing of that sort. We do so much more for our employees than the union asks us to that our girls don't want to belong to any union because it would just





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help