Frances Perkins: “City Diets and Democracy”

About the Author

As secretary of labor during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration, Frances Perkins was a tireless advocate for New Deal social reforms. The first woman to hold a cabinet position, she restructured and refocused the Department of Labor and was instrumental in crafting the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. A passionate speaker, Perkins developed her oratory skills as a spokesperson for women's suffrage and social reforms in the early 1900s. Early in her career, she persuaded politicians to pass legislation to improve conditions for women and children before women had the right to vote. As a voice for working Americans, she negotiated with unions during a period of labor unrest and spoke eloquently about the plight of the average American during the Great Depression. Always concerned with social justice, Perkins was a leader not only as a woman cabinet member but also as a champion of reform.

Fanny Perkins was born on April 10, 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts, but spent most of her youth in Worcester, where her father established a successful stationery business. She attended Mount Holyoke College, where she learned of the growing settlement movement, a network of college graduates who would “settle” in poor urban areas and work with residents to reform their neighborhoods. Perkins volunteered at two settlement houses while she worked as a teacher in Lake Forest, Chicago, including the well-known Hull House started by Jane Addams. The experience was life changing; Fanny changed her name to Frances, earned a master's degree in social economics from Columbia University, and embarked on a career in social reform. Before receiving her degree, she took a position as secretary of the New York City Consumers' League, one of the most prominent organizations in the American reform movement.

Perkins's visibility eventually earned her an appointment to the state's Factory Investigating Commission following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, in which 146 workers died, many of whom were women. The commission's recommendations resulted in enactment of more than thirty new laws regulating fire prevention, work hours for women and children, and sanitary conditions in the workplace. In 1913 Perkins married Paul C. Wilson, who was involved in city government. She worried that her visibility would embarrass her husband; she retained her maiden name in part to distance herself from him publicly. In 1929 newly elected Governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as industrial commissioner of New York. In this role she continued to pursue issues of social justice and reform through legislative lobbying and public speaking. She was a vocal proponent of unemployment insurance and old-age assistance, foreshadowing her role in developing the federal system of Social Security. Perkins adopted a consensus style of management, involving workers, management, and the general public in developing solutions to labor problems.

Roosevelt tapped Perkins as secretary of labor when he became president in 1933. Her appointment met with resentment by many who felt that the position belonged to a union man rather than a woman reformer. As the nation faced the worst years of the depression, she actively embraced Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and instituted some of her own. She reorganized the Department of Labor, establishing a merit system and emphasizing workers' rights rather than the larger interests of the business community. Unlike previous secretaries, Perkins regularly pushed for new legislation to aid workers. She was instrumental in the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps and held public meetings throughout the country to give workers a voice in developing the National Recovery Administration codes of fair competition. Her management style was at times a point of contention; when she refused to deport a striker during the San Francisco longshoremen's strike, she faced impeachment charges, which were dismissed following a House committee investigation. Roosevelt appointed Perkins head of the Committee on Economic Security, the body responsible for developing the Social Security Act, which established the first national system of unemployment insurance and old-age assistance. She oversaw the drafting of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which outlawed child labor in factories and set minimum wages and maximum working hours. She resigned in 1945 after serving for twelve years.

During her brief retirement, Perkins published The Roosevelt I Knew (1946), a personal account of her working relationship with Roosevelt before and during his presidency. In September of the same year, President Harry S. Truman appointed Perkins to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which made decisions regarding the hiring and retention of government employees. She resigned in 1953, returning to teaching in her later years. She taught at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations for eight years. Vigorous well into her eighties, her health deteriorated late in 1964. In the spring of 1965 Perkins suffered several strokes and died on May 14, 1965.