Frances Perkins

Secretary of Labor

  • Born: April 10, 1880
  • Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
  • Died: May 14, 1965
  • Place of death: New York, New York

American secretary of labor

Perkins, as secretary of labor for twelve years under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the first woman to serve in a U.S. president’s cabinet. As secretary of labor, she was instrumental in developing legislation to improve labor conditions for workers. Her most notable achievement was to chair the committee responsible for developing the Social Security system.

Areas of achievement Government and politics, labor movement

Early Life

Frances Perkins was born in Boston. In 1882, her family moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where her father prospered in the stationery business. Known as Fannie Coralie Perkins until her twenty-fifth year, she was raised in the fashion typical of middle-class girls of her generation. Her conservative, New England family upbringing influenced her early life. She was taught to behave like a lady, to be seen but not heard, and to accept her father’s authority on all matters. Her childhood was comfortable and sheltered. She learned to read at a young age and was encouraged to do so by her father. Although she was extremely shy as a young girl, at school she discovered her ability to express herself through words.

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School broadened her range of experiences, and she was very involved in a variety of activities. Her ability to debate enabled her to pass her courses with ease, and she was graduated from high school in 1898. Not sure what she wanted to do with her life, Perkins decided that she would pursue teaching because that was an acceptable occupation for a woman of her time. She convinced her father that attending college would help her find a good teaching position, so he agreed to let her attend Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts.

Perkins entered Mount Holyoke with no particular direction for her studies. After taking a required chemistry course, however, she discovered her skills and interest in the sciences. She pursued chemistry as her major, but in her last year at Mount Holyoke she took a course that changed her life. It was an economics course, but unlike other courses, it involved the direct observation of factories and industry. Perkins was deeply affected by the working conditions of women and children in the factories. This experience gave Perkins an awareness of social conditions that affected her the rest of her life.

After she was graduated in 1902, Perkins taught briefly at several girls’ schools until finding a permanent job teaching chemistry at Ferry Hall School in Lake Forest, Illinois, outside Chicago. Although it was far from her family, her father agreed to let her go, and in 1904 she left for Chicago.

Perkins taught for two years, spending her free time in Chicago working with many of the social reformers there. She was greatly inspired by the efforts of settlement workers, and in 1906, she left teaching to live at Hull House, the settlement house founded by Jane Addams. Although she was there for only six months, the time greatly influenced her, and Perkins was convinced that her calling was to strive to change working conditions for laborers, particularly women and children.

Life’s Work

Frances Perkins’s first paid employment in reforming labor conditions came in 1907, when she left Chicago to become the secretary of the Philadelphia Research and Protection Association. The organization helped immigrant girls from Europe and African American girls from southern states who came to Philadelphia looking for work. The young girls were often preyed on by unscrupulous employers or forced into prostitution. As secretary, Perkins was responsible for gathering facts and using them to pressure city officials to legislate changes in employment practices. In this first job, Perkins developed skills she used throughout her professional life. She learned to gather data on working conditions and use it to influence policymakers to develop laws to protect workers. Perkins felt that the best way to help workers and the poor was through government action.

Perkins left in 1909 and went to study at the New York School of Philanthropy. In 1910, she graduated with a master’s degree in political science from Columbia University. With her social work and political science training, she was well prepared to follow her chosen path of working for labor reform and rights. Perkins became the executive secretary of the New York City Consumers’ League in 1910. In this position, she was responsible for investigating the conditions that existed in industries dominated by women workers. Living in Greenwich Village near many of the factories, Perkins witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, the worst factory fire in New York history. The sight of young women jumping out of windows because there were no fire escapes reinforced Perkins’s commitment to social and labor reform. After witnessing that event, she realized that organizing and union efforts, while important, were not enough. She became convinced that only through the power of legislation could there be real change.

The aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire did bring legislative action. The New York State assembly founded the New York State Factory Commission in 1911. Perkins was director of investigation for the commission until 1913.

In 1912, while serving on the State Factory Commission, Perkins took the position of executive secretary of the New York Committee on Safety. Already experienced in lobbying from her work with the Consumers’ League, she was active in influencing the passage of numerous regulations protecting workers and improving labor conditions. Included in her legislative efforts were reorganizing the state labor department and limiting the workweek for women to fifty-four hours. These were the first legislative efforts at labor reform by any state.

In 1913, Perkins married Paul Wilson, an economist and budget expert with the Bureau of Municipal Research. As intensely private people who were committed to their work, they kept their personal lives separate from their public lives. Perkins chose to keep her birth name, for she felt she had made much progress and saw no reason to take her husband’s name. Over the next few years, she maintained her work with the Committee on Safety. In 1916, after experiencing two unsuccessful pregnancies, she gave birth to a daughter Susanne, her only child. Perkins limited her travels and lobbying, but stayed with the Committee on Safety until 1917.

Perkins’s years with the Consumers’ League and work on state commissions brought her close to a number of New York politicians. In 1918, she campaigned for Al Smith, a legislator who had supported her early labor reform efforts. Smith was elected governor of New York and after he took office in 1919, he appointed Perkins to her first public position, as a member of the New York State Industrial Commission. Perkins served in Smith’s administrations until 1929. During those years, she mediated strikes between workers and management, improved factory inspections, regulated working conditions, and administered workers’ compensation. When Smith, who ran unsuccessfully for president, was replaced as governor by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Perkins was appointed industrial commissioner of the State of New York. Perkins thus became the first woman to serve on a governor’s cabinet.

With the full support of Roosevelt, Perkins was able to make significant reforms in working conditions in New York. She expanded employment services, increased factory investigations, and created data-gathering systems to provide information necessary to support legislative change. Among her legislative initiatives were reducing the workweek for women to forty-eight hours, creating a minimum wage, and developing unemployment insurance. These efforts proved to be the blueprint for the work she did with Roosevelt years later in Washington.

Perkins served under Governor Roosevelt until his election as president of the United States. Without hesitation, President Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as his secretary of labor. In 1933, Frances Perkins became the first woman ever to be appointed to a cabinet-level position. She accepted the position with the understanding that she was free to pursue the social reforms she had begun in New York and had advocated throughout her professional career.

Initially, labor and business leaders were critical of the idea of a female secretary of labor. Fully aware of that fact, Perkins developed a leadership style that brought together labor and management through cooperation and conciliation. As secretary of labor, Perkins also tried to bring together different factions of the labor movement. With the Great Depression looming, Perkins viewed reforming labor conditions as a way to improve economic conditions.

Over time, Perkins was successful in facilitating legislative reforms. Major relief legislation passed during Perkins’s first years included the establishment of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration. These programs represented the first major employment efforts by the federal government. Additional legislation was passed to regulate minimum wages, child labor, and work hours.

Perkins’s major contributions as secretary of labor were the development of a data system to track statistics on employment and unemployment, standardization of state industrial legislation, and the development of the Social Security system. Perkins chaired the Committee on Economic Security, which crafted the Social Security Act of 1935. For both Perkins and Roosevelt, the Social Security Act represented a major accomplishment because it established minimum securities for workers through national insurance. In 1938, Perkins realized another major labor reform through the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set minimum wages, maximum work hours, and child labor prohibitions.

Perkins remained secretary of labor throughout Roosevelt’s years as president. She resigned in 1945 and served on the U.S. Civil Service Commission until 1953. Her last years were spent writing and teaching at Cornell University. Frances Perkins died on May 14, 1965, in New York City.

Significance

Frances Perkins’s work demonstrated a rare blend of social concern and political action. Her early years in settlement houses and investigating working conditions propelled her to work toward changing the American labor system and improving the lives of working women and men. Perkins was convinced that what the labor system needed was legislative reform, not a complete overhaul. She devoted her professional career to influencing legislation that supported the needs of workers, particularly women and their families.

Perkins’s role as a member of the presidential cabinet paved the way for future women to be directly involved in government action. She held public office before women could even vote. As a lobbyist and public official, she was instrumental in establishing government as a developer and regulator of legislation to protect workers. Under her influence, programs such as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages, and Social Security were formed. Such social legislation changed the face of labor forever and formed the foundation of modern workers’ rights.

Bibliography

Felbinger, Claire L., and Wendy A. Haynes, eds. Outstanding Women in Public Administration: Leaders, Mentors, and Pioneers. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2004. Perkins is one of the women whose careers are examined in this book.

Martin, George W. Madam Secretary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. A comprehensive and extensive biography based on Perkins’s oral history, this book provides a very personal view of Perkins’s life.

Mohr, Lillian Holmen. Frances Perkins: That Woman in FDR’s Cabinet! Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.: North River Press, 1979. A biography of Perkins with some emphasis on the role of Perkins as a woman in government.

Schiff, Karenna Gore. Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America. New York: Miramax Books/Hyperion, 2005. Perkins is one of the nine women profiled in this book about women social reformers.

Severn, Bill. Frances Perkins: A Member of the Cabinet. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976. Chronicles Perkins’s life from her youth throughout her years in government.

Sternsher, Bernard, and Judith Sealander, eds. Women of Valor: The Struggle Against the Great Depression as Told in Their Own Life Stories. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1990. This collection of essays by various women includes a piece by Perkins, excerpted from her book The Roosevelt I Knew. It gives insight into the kind of government official she was.

Wandersee, Winifred D. “I’d Rather Pass a Law than Organize a Union: Frances Perkins and the Reformist Approach to Organized Labor.” Labor History 34, no. 1 (Winter, 1993): 5-32. Describes Perkins’s approach to working with organized labor during her cabinet years.

Whisenhunt, Donald W., ed. The Human Tradition in America Between the Wars, 1920-1945. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2002. A collection of biographical essays describing how a wide range of Americans coped with the significant changes in American society that occurred from 1920 through 1945. Includes an essay on Perkins.

1901-1940: March 25, 1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire; October 29, 1929-1939: Great Depression; January 30, 1933: Hitler Comes to Power in Germany; August 14, 1935: Roosevelt Signs the Social Security Act; May 26, 1938: HUAC Is Established; June 25, 1938: Fair Labor Standards Act.