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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 654

of the State of New York.

What is called welfare has nothing to do with labor legislation. The whole body of labor legislation in any of the states and the whole content of the operations of the Labor Departments of the states, as well as the operations of the Labor Department of the federal government, which was a measly little affair as compared to the good departments of New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, California, had as its content the development and administration and adjudication of labor legislation which had to do with the physical condition of the work places, the regulation of the hours of labor in the interests of the health of the employees, or in the interests of common humanity. The workmen's compensation, which began to come in, was a right which by legislation sprang out of the contract of employment and supplanted the old common law concept of damages in the master-servant relationships.

There was nothing else in any labor law. That's all there was in any labor law. That's what labor law is. That is the content of a Labor Department. If you start making the Labor Departments the promoters of labor organizations, you have ruined them. There isn't any such thing. The labor union is strictly a private organization, a private





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