Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

that he pointed out that fact that 2 man was a plumber, had been a plumber by trade and an officer of the plumber's union and was the workers' representative, didn't give him any special knowledge or wisdom with regard to the demands of a set of strikers in the boot and shoe industry. Neither did the fact that a man had been the president of a big steel company and was a competent employer give him any special insight into the employers' needs and problems in that same industry. Yet the strike they were dealing with was 2 strike which affected the supply of shoes not only for the civilian population, but for the army. So the War Industries Board pumped right into it, and they got bargaining between a plumber on the one hand and a steel manufacturer on the other, which was very unrealistic with regard to the problems and the conditions of work and the way you do things in the boot and shoe industry. All manufacturing is very different.

This was only sketched in this report, but it hit at once upon what began to be a considerable prejudice or bias of my own. I had struck this bias way back in the New York days. I developed this bias as I realized how different every industry is from every other industry. I remember pointing out in an annual report while I was still Industrial Commissioner of the State of New York how





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help