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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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it. It was something short of noble. If he really was a St. Francis of Assisi, there really is something very noble about sharing the life of the workers.

But it's also not a very intelligent thing to do if what you want to do is to make their life better, because you should take what learning, training, abilities, you've got and attach them to some enterprise which, either through law, or through change of custom on the part of employers, can bring about the changes that you think are wise.

But I kept hearing about this Mervyn Rathbone. Finally on one occasion he came into see me. I had been hearing about him a long time and I had been hearing about all this rumpus of how the navy distrusted the radio operators, how the merchant marine ships distrusted the radio operators. It was always very underground. You never got anything straight. You never got an actual case, or an actual complaint. So that when he was said to be outside of my office, I was interested to meet him.

He came in. He proved to be very good-looking, one of these pink-checked, blond-haired, blue-eyed Englishman, who looks more like a boy at Winchester than like a grown man working for his living. I





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