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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 654

Then I mentioned to him that there were no safety laws in many states. There was very little knowledge of safety and accident prevention throughout the country. That was confined almost entirely to the big industrial states. But there were, nevertheless, enormous industries that were operating all over the country. By pressing on them in one way or another you could promote education with regard to the prevention of accidents. That was all right with him.

We then mentioned the necessity to go forward to unemployment insurance as one of the methods of preventing unemployment distress in the future. Whereas at the beginning we must relieve unemployment as best we could with improvised ways with state cooperation, we must also cut down the causes of this unemployment, one of which was the lack of unemployment insurance, as well as the employment of child labor, unregulated hours, unregulated wages. There was no unemployment insurance or compensation a vailable when the roll down began.

I said that we must try to promote a scheme of self help among the industries - voluntary educational things. This may have been a root of the NRA. We had been sucessful in the State of New York in persuading certain industries to adopt a pattern of employment in their city which gave employment to as many people as possible, even on a part





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