Woman's History Month: Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary, was the principal architect of the New Deal, credited with formulating policies to shore up the national economy following the nation’s most serious economic crisis and helping to create the modern middle class. She was in every respect a self-made woman who rose from humble New England origins to become America’s leading advocate for industrial safety and workers’ rights.

“From the time I was in college I was horrified at the work that many women and children had to do in factories. There were absolutely no effective laws that regulated the number of hours they were permitted to work. There were no provisions which guarded their health nor adequately looked after their compensation in case of injury. Those things seemed very wrong. I was young and was inspired with the idea of reforming, or at east doing what I could, to help change those abuses.” Perkins said.

Fanny’s fellow students organized a chapter of the National Consumers League and, in February of 1902, invited its executive secretary, Florence Kelley, to speak at Mount Holyoke. Later Frances Perkins told a friend that Kelley’s speech “first opened my mind to the necessity for and the possibility of the work which became my vocation.”

In 1907, Frances Perkins accepted a position as general secretary of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association, a new organization whose goal was to thwart the diversion of newly arrived immigrant girls, including black women from the South, into prostitution. She studied sociology and economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with the progressive economist Simon N. Patten. In 1909, she began a fellowship with the New York School of Philanthropy, investigating childhood malnutrition among school children in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, and enrolled as a Master’s Degree candidate in sociology and economics at Columbia University. Her research project, entitled “A Study of Malnutrition in 107 Children from Public School 51,” became her Master’s thesis.

In 1910, fulfilling an objective she set for herself eight years before, Frances Perkins became Executive Secretary of the New York City Consumers League, working directly with Florence Kelley, the woman whose speech at Mount Holyoke had set the course of her career. Her work focused on the need for sanitary regulations for bakeries, fire protection for factories, and legislation to limit the working hours for women and children in factories to 54 hours per week. Much of her work was in Albany, in the halls and committee rooms of the state capitol. There, with the guidance and counsel of Assemblyman Al Smith, Senator Robert Wagner and newfound Tammany Hall allies, Frances Perkins learned the skills of an effective lobbyist for labor and social reforms.

At the suggestion of Theodore Roosevelt, Frances Perkins was hired as the group’s executive secretary. One of the Committee’s first actions was to seek a state commission to investigate and make legislative recommendations. The Factory Investigating Commission’s mandate was much broader than originally contemplated: to study not only fire safety, but other threats to the health and well-being of industrial workers and the impact of those threats upon families. Frances Perkins, by that time a recognized expert in the field of worker health and safety, served as expert witness, investigator and guide, leading legislators on inspections of the state’s factories and worksites to view first-hand the dangers of unfettered industrialism. The Commission’s work resulted in the most comprehensive set of laws governing workplace health and safety in the nation.

The gubernatorial election of 1918 was the first in which women in New York had the right to vote. Frances Perkins campaigned hard to capture the women’s vote for Al Smith, her friend and ally during her prior work in Albany. Shortly after his election as governor, Smith appointed her to a vacant seat on the New York State Industrial Commission. She was the first woman to be appointed to an administrative position in New York state government and, with an annual salary of $8000, the highest paid woman ever to hold public office in the United States. Smith’s goal was to weed out the incompetence and corruption in the state labor department so that Frances and her fellow commissioners would enforce the laws the Factory Investigating Commission had brought about. For Smith’s four terms as governor, Frances Perkins served as his closest labor advisor, working with him to build on the legislative accomplishments of the prior decade. In his final term, he appointed her to chair the Industrial Commission.

In the election of 1928, Smith lost his bid to become the nation’s president, and New York elected a new governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins to become the state’s Industrial Commissioner, with oversight responsibilities for the entire labor department. Soon, she became the most prominent state labor official in the nation, as she and Roosevelt searched for new ways to deal with rising unemployment. “We have awakened with a shock to the frightful injustice of economic conditions which will allow men and women who are willing to work to suffer the distress of hunger and cold and humiliating dependence. We have determined to find out what makes involuntary employment,” she said.

“I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.”

When, in February, 1933, President-elect Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins to serve in his cabinet as Secretary of Labor, she outlined for him a set of policy priorities she would pursue: a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; unemployment compensation; worker’s compensation; abolition of child labor; direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief; Social Security; a revitalized federal employment service; and universal health insurance. She made it clear to Roosevelt that his agreement with these priorities was a condition of her joining his cabinet. Roosevelt said he endorsed them all, and Frances Perkins became the first woman in the nation to serve in a Presidential cabinet.

Source: http://francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/