PERKINS, FRANCES

At a time when few women achieved prominence in national politics, Frances Perkins distinguished herself as a public official, a respected labor and industry expert, and an adviser to the president of the United States. When Perkins was named secretary of labor by President franklin d. roosevelt in 1933, she became the first woman in U.S. history to hold a cabinet post. Perkins used her position to help launch the sweeping social and economic reforms of the new deal.

Perkins was born April 10, 1880, in Boston, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. After graduating from Worcester Classical High School, Perkins attended Mount Holyoke College, where she studied physics and chemistry and was class president. As a senior at Mount Holyoke, Perkins was influenced by Jacob A. Riis's 1890 book How the Other Half Lives and by a speech given by Florence Kelley, the general secretary of the National Consumers League. Perkins's growing awareness of the plight of underprivileged U.S. citizens would lead to her life's work as a labor activist. After graduating from Mount Holyoke in 1902, Perkins pursued further studies in economics and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She earned a master's degree from Columbia in 1910.

After graduate school, Perkins briefly taught biology and physics in a school in Lake Forest, Illinois. In her off-hours, she volunteered at Jane Addams's Hull House, in nearby Chicago, and at other settlement houses. There, Perkins witnessed the poverty and wretched working conditions endured by thousands of U.S. citizens. Determined to help improve the plight of workers, she returned to New York City to work as a lobbyist with her mentor, Kelley, at the New York Consumers League.

Perkins's task was formidable. Throughout the early twentieth century, U.S. businesses were unregulated: workers in sweatshops worked long hours for low pay in unsafe working conditions. There were no building codes to ensure the employees' safety, no regular inspections of equipment and machinery, and no limit to the number of hours employees could work. Children routinely were employed in factories, mills, and mines under the most miserable conditions. Some women worked nineteen hours a day with their children by their side.

"We all take refuge in the optimism which is typical of this great creative nation. Every situation has found us unprepared."
—Frances Perkins

An industrial tragedy heightened Perkins's resolve to force changes in the workplace. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, in New York City. Perkins happened to be in the neighborhood and watched as employees trapped on the top three floors of the burning ten-story building jumped

from windows to their death. The door to the only stairway in the building had been locked by employers, to halt break-ins. One hundred workers perished inside the building, and forty-seven jumped or fell to their death. The owners of the company were later absolved of criminal negligence for the disaster and collected $64,925 in property damage insurance.

In the fire's aftermath, the New York State Factory Commission was created, with Perkins named as chief investigator. She also became a member of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York and lobbied hard for legislation to make the workplace safer. She toured the state with Alfred E. Smith and robert f. wagner and documented the deplorable conditions faced by workers. An exhaustive investigation led to new laws to protect the labor force.

A major success for Perkins was the passage of a bill by the New York Legislature to limit the workweek to fifty-four hours for women and children. The bill was vigorously opposed by the employers of the four hundred thousand female factory workers throughout the state. While lobbying for the bill, Perkins became acquainted with Roosevelt, who was a New York state senator. Although Roosevelt's support of the fifty-four-hour bill was lukewarm, Perkins developed a professional relationship with him that grew stronger as Roosevelt's views on labor and government began to mirror her own.

In 1913 Perkins married Paul Caldwell Wilson and rejected prevailing social convention by retaining her maiden name for professional purposes. In 1918 she was appointed to the New York State Industrial Commission.

Perkins's work with Roosevelt in New York led to a position in the federal government. When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he asked Perkins to become secretary of labor. Although she argued that a female trade unionist should be nominated for the post, she eventually accepted the position. Perkins became the only cabinet member to serve during all four of Roosevelt's terms of office.

When Roosevelt took office, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. About a third of the nation's workforce was unemployed. As labor secretary, Perkins helped shape the social security act (42 U.S.C.A. § 301 et seq.), a key component of Roosevelt's New Deal. Passed by the U.S. Congress in 1935, the act allowed qualified workers in commerce and

industry to collect old-age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits. The new program required employers and employees to make contributions to a federal pension fund for aged and disabled persons. In this way, workers and their families were financially protected in the event of unemployment, old age, or the death of a wage earner. Although critics likened the plan to socialism, social security became a successful federal entitlement program.

Perkins also helped develop the fair labor standards act of 1938 (29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq.), which limited the number of hours employees could work for minimum wage. The law also placed restrictions on child labor. It prohibited children under sixteen years of age from working in most jobs, and made hazardous occupations unavailable to workers under eighteen years of age. The Wage and Hour Division of the labor department was also established by the act.

After Roosevelt's death in 1945, Perkins served briefly in the administration of President harry s. truman. She left Truman's cabinet to serve on the U.S. Civil Service Commission from 1946 to 1952. Perkins then taught courses at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She died in New York City on May 14, 1965, at the age of eighty-five.

further readings

Pasachoff, Naomi. 1999. Frances Perkins: Champion of the New Deal. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Pirro, Jeanine Ferris. 1999. "Reforming the Urban Workplace: The Legacy of Frances Perkins." Fordham Urban Law Journal 26 (May).

Whitney, Sharon, and Tom Raynor. 1986. Women in Politics. New York: Franklin Watts.

cross-references

Child Labor Laws; Labor Law.

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).

PERKINS, FRANCES 1882-1965

Secretary of labor (1933-1945)

First Woman Cabinet Member

Frances Perkins was the first American woman appointed to a cabinet post. As secretary of labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, she was a leading force in New Deal labor policy.

Background

Born in Boston, Frances Perkins was a vigorous advocate for social justice. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1902, she became a teacher. In 1904, when she took a job at a school in Lake Forest, Illinois, she began volunteer work in Chicago settlement houses, learning firsthand the problems of the poor. In 1907 she moved to Philadelphia, where she became general secretary of the Research and Protective Association. After moving to New York in 1909 and earning an A.M. in economics and sociology at Columbia University in 1910, she became secretary of the New York Consumers' League (1910-1912). She worked to address the problems of working conditions and lobbied the state legislature for industrial reform. While she was secretary of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York (1912-1915), she exposed the horrors of sweatshops.

New York State Appointments

In 1918 Gov. Alfred E. Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission, where she headed the Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration and worked to settle strikes. She lost that post when Smith was defeated in the 1920 gubernatorial election, but when Smith was elected governor again in 1922, she regained her job on the renamed New York State Industrial Board and took over the handling of workmen's compensation cases. Smith made her head of the board in 1926, and in 1928 he named her state industrial commissioner. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became governor in 1929 he reappointed Perkins, who became a trusted adviser. She worked tirelessly for the eight-hour day, stricter factory-safety laws, and protective labor laws for women and children. When the Depression hit, she encouraged Roosevelt to implement state unemployment insurance as well as relief payments to the poor.

Madame Secretary

After Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he named Perkins to his cabinet. As U.S. secretary of labor, Perkins enlarged the department's Bureau of Women and Children and put its Mediation and Conciliation Service on firm footing. She played a commanding role in developing the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. As chair of the president's Committee on Economic Security, Perkins contributed substantially to crafting the Social Security Act of 1935. During World War II Perkins used her power as secretary of labor to resist conservatives' efforts to undo the labor legislation of the 1930s. After Roosevelt's death in 1945, she resigned her cabinet post, and from that year until her death in 1965 she served on the Civil Service Commission.

Sources:

George Martin, Madam Secretary: Frances Perkins (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976);

Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: Viking, 1946).

Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins (1882-1965), American social worker, U.S. secretary of labor, and civil service commissioner, was the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet.

Frances Perkins was born in Boston, Mass., on April 10, 1882, and grew up in Worcester, the daughter of a manufacturer. At the age of 16 she entered Mount Holyoke College. Following her graduation in 1902, she spent 2 years in Worcester as a social worker for the Episcopal Church. She then taught school near Chicago before working at Hull House. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance, she took a master's degree at Columbia University in 1910.

Perkins next became executive secretary of the Consumers' League of New York, which investigated industrial conditions and lobbied for ameliorative legislation. In 1913 she married Paul Caldwell Wilson, a financial statistician, and they had one daughter.

Between 1919 and 1929 Miss Perkins was industrial commissioner for the state of New York. She helped get further reductions of the work week for women, the publication of monthly figures on unemployment within the state, and other reforms. She was also active in immigrant education programs and won the confidence of both trade unionists and middle-class reformers. In 1929 newly elected governor Franklin D. Roosevelt made her labor commissioner of New York. Four years later she followed Roosevelt (now president) to Washington as secretary of labor, the first woman to hold a Cabinet appointment.

Although opposed by both business groups and the leadership of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) because of her sex and her liberal social and economic views, Perkins did a reasonably good job. Her department improved the operation of the Children's Bureau, began issuing regular unemployment figures, and contributed significantly to the standardization of state labor laws and the formulation of the Social Security Act. The Labor Department proved ineffectual in dealing with the industrial disturbances of the 1930s and with the strife between the AFL and the emergent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Despite persistent, often harsh, criticism, Perkins stayed in office, resigning only after Roosevelt's death in 1945. Soon after, however, President Harry Truman appointed her to the U.S. Civil Service Commission. She served quietly and rather obscurely until she resigned in 1953. For the next 12 years Perkins lectured at Cornell University and other institutions. She died in New York City on May 14, 1965.

Further Reading

Autobiographical information on Perkins is in her The Roosevelt I Knew (1946). The most scholarly account of her career as secretary of labor is in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt (3 vols., 1957-1960). □

Perkins, Frances (1880–1965), secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first woman cabinet member.Graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1902, Frances Perkins received her M.S. in political science from Columbia University in 1910. She married the economist Paul Wilson in 1913 and had one child, a daughter.

Perkins began her career investigating factory conditions and later held labor posts under New York governors Alfred E. Smith and Roosevelt. Upon his election as president in 1932, Roosevelt asked Perkins to be secretary of labor. She accepted on the condition that he support a host of reforms including unemployment, old age, and health insurance; a federal employment service; and the end of child labor. She served as secretary of labor until 1945, throughout Roosevelt's entire administration. Thereafter, following six years as a member of the Civil Service Commission, Perkins turned to teaching, first briefly at the University of Illinois and then at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Perkins's accomplishments place her in the first rank of secretaries of labor. She founded the Division of Labor Standards, a precursor to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and she successfully fought for legislation to regulate wages and hours and to guarantee employees' right to organize. Most important, as chair of the 1935 Committee on Economic Security, Perkins was an engineer of the New Deal's social welfare legislation including Social Security and unemployment insurance, which built the system of worker protection still in place.
See also Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Department of Labor); New Deal Era, The.

Bibliography

Don Lawson , Frances Perkins: First Lady of the Cabinet, 1966.
Penny Coleman , A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins, 1993.

Deborah J. Anderson and and Francine D. Blau