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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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be organized in no time. The French don't do that. They run around wildly, even in the face of disaster, until authority shows itself. That authority is a system. They won't give way to a dictator, but to a system that is the governmental system.

So there was no system by which they could settle these strikes, and they had a dreadful time with them - a dreadful time. Blum greatly regretted the necessity of having had to issue a directive as to what the wages should be, what the sanitary conditions should be, and so forth. One of the great complaints of the French workers was that their sanitary facilities were not adequate, which I think was true.

Jouhaux was very unwilling to take these new members in. He said, “They're a bunch of fly-by-nights. They're irregular. You never can tell what they're going to do. I don't know how many Communists there are among them. Anyhow, I can't control them. It's going to be terrible to take in 5000 people all at once. It's just going to wreck us. It'll be a terrible thing. But I've got to do it. The Premier says we must. We really can't refuse to accept an organization of workers if they say that they want to belong to us, but I'm afraid of what it'll do to the Confederation.





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