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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Jim has always been just as good to me since the break as he was before. I've never had occasion to have much to do with him politically, of course.

Jim was one of the greatest assets I had when it came to strikes, which were pestiferous in the period that I was Secretary of Labor. They were just beyond words. The primary difficulty in those days was that employers, many of them, just would not talk business with the unions. They just wouldn't do it. They would find ways of dodging and getting out of it, getting away from it. Although the unions were often depicted as making impossible demands, they never got a chance to make their demands, or rarely got a chance, at the place where they could be heard, because the fellows who ought to hear them wouldn't be there. They'd have to make their demands to the newspapers because they couldn't sit down and bargain, or even talk, with the men who were the officers of the particular industry. That, of course, made it a very difficult situation. They made their demands to the newspapers and then they started demonstrating, all of which roused public antagonisms and made everybody madder and madder.

Jim was the greatest possible help to me. I would talk to him about the situation, tell him what the situation





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