Perkins, Frances 1882-1965

PERKINS, FRANCES 1882-1965

U.s. secretary of labor 1933-1945

Advocate of Workers

Frances Perkins was the first woman ever appointed to a cabinet position in the United States. As secretary of labor during all of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administrations she was instrumental in shaping government recognition of the American labor movement. By rebuilding a nearly defunct department she was able to enforce the sweeping legislation that emerged from the New Deal, which aimed to impart rights and dignity ordinary working people never before enjoyed. As an expert on the health and safety of workers, especially women and children, Perkins left an indelible stamp upon the Labor Department and contributed to widespread public support for fair and safe workplaces.

Social Reformer

Born in Boston on 10 April 1882 to a prosperous upper-middle-class family, in 1902 Perkins graduated from Mount Holyoke College, where she adopted the social activism characteristic of privileged educated women during the era. A few years after graduation she began working closely with Jane Addams of Chicago's Hull House, where she observed firsthand the tremendous problems of poverty and social isolation endured by the many immigrants flowing into America at the turn of the century. Perceiving that America was becoming increasingly polarized into a nation of "haves" and "have-nots," she became a reform leader seeking legislation to protect children and improve unsafe working conditions. After moving to New York to earn a master's degree in social economics from Columbia University, she was profoundly moved in 1911 when she witnessed the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, in which locked doors in an eighth-floor garment sweatshop led to the deaths of 146 workers, mostly women and children. Over the next two decades Perkins committed herself to reforming the horrendous conditions under which the working poor of New York labored.

To the Cabinet

From 1912 to 1917 Perkins served as a member of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York, where she met Roosevelt. After World War I she worked on and became chair of the New York State Industrial Commission and in 1929 was appointed the state's industrial commissioner by then-governor Roosevelt. When the Depression struck in 1929, Perkins was among the first to call for unemployment compensation, then a rarely considered remedy for joblessness. Hers was a prominent voice arguing for direct government intervention in the workings of the private economy to ensure justice and equity for the unemployed. She was opposed by many industrialists for her reformism and by many labor organizers for her gender, but her competence, integrity, and commitment made her Roosevelt's first choice for labor secretary when he was elected president in 1932. Perkins immediately went to work to revive a virtually moribund department to meet the challenge of the Depression, and she was the guiding force behind the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, minimum-wage laws, welfare, and public works. As labor secretary she was responsible for enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act and became a scourge of those in private industry who sought to circumvent the law. Once the New Deal legislation was safely passed, Perkins devoted her energies to bolstering the power of the Labor Department to oversee fair labor practices and made the Bureau of Labor Statistics one of the most vital sources of information to economists and political scientists while ensuring that the bureau also gauged the economic health of the American worker.

Controversy

Perkins's tenure as labor secretary was fraught with controversy. Because she took labor's side in its struggle with management she was sometimes labeled a Communist, foreshadowing the anticommunist hysteria of the late 1940s and the 1950s. In 1934 she refused to initiate proceedings to deport Harry Bridges, the Australian-born leader of the West Coast Longshoremen's Union. An alleged Communist, Bridges led a long and costly general strike in San Francisco. Her critics were further outraged in 1937 when she refused to condemn the sit-down strikers in Flint, Michigan, for their takeover of General Motors auto plants, and she argued against sending in troops to oust the workers. One of her enemies, Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, offered a bill of impeachment against her in 1939. In hearings held before the House Judiciary Committee she defended her record, stating that she had refused to initiate procedures to deport Bridges because he had rights of due process no committee of Congress could override. Her impeachment was halted.

Friend to Labor

Labor has seldom had a better friend in government than Perkins, Two months after Roosevelt's death she resigned from the Labor Department, believing that President Harry S Truman should have his own cabinet, and she published her memoir The Roosevelt I Knew (1946). President Truman appointed her to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, where she served until 1953. She lectured widely on the problems of working people, continuing to champion progressive social legislation until her death in New York on 14 May 1965.

Source:

George Martin, Madam Secretary: Frances Perkins (Boston: Hough ton Mifflin, 1976).