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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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accidentally. She gave the Negro elevator man in a loft building a dollar to keep still and let her in. She found people working illegally. Then she traced one of the inspectors and found that it was true that he went in and had a talk and a drink with the boss.

I saw through that that she had terrific energy and if you told her what to do, she wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid to do gumshoe work. She was just tough enough so that nobody would have gotten gay with her. I remembered her when I began to hear about these troubles at Massena and this region north of Massena where these old mines were. So I said to her, “Surely there are some immigrants up there. Some of these people who have been injured have funny names like Jablowsky and so forth. It must be that they're immigrants. You go up there and make a regular immigration inspection to see whether the immigrants are being properly looked after.”

She went up and made not what I could call a scientific investigation or inspection, but she just did uncover perfectly dreadful things that you wouldn't have thought could continue to exist in the State of New York. There were very, very unsanitary conditions not only in the mines, but in the mine towns. There were huts and hovels that they provided for the miners. There was very bad polluted water and all





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