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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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money in the medical costs of the case. Third, it cost you money in the interruption of the orderly flow of work and in the excitement and disturbance of the people who surrounded the victim of the accident, whether they themselves had an accident or not. It's very disrupting to an orderly and swift production program. So they were very quick always to take up with the very latest wrinkles in good safety conditions, good ventilation, all that sort of thing. We never had the slightest trouble with them. In fact, they were model employers.

But it always remained true (and I'm in no position to speak about it today) that they discouraged unionization very successfully and they did have a considerably lower scale of wages than was commonly paid in other parts of the state for the same kind of labor. What the effects of the war period and the greater organization of labor has been on those towns, I don't know at this date in 1952. But at that time I did know.

So, during the campaign I went to those towns and had the full cooperation of the two leading employers of the community. There were also boots and shoes around Binghamton. I don't remember any cooperation from the smaller boots and shoes manufacturers, although I did get it from Endicott.





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