MEET LIFESAVER FRANCES PERKINS!
How did one woman, against all odds, make so many lives better? What do you do if you're in the depths of a Great Depression? What happened during her encounter with IBT General President James R. Hoffa in 1963? Why didn't we learn about her in history class?
Fannie Coralie Perkins was born in Boston Massachusetts,1880. She spent her childhood summers with her grandmother on the farm in Newcastle. Frances later explained. "I am extraordinarily the product of my grandmother," whose wisdom guided her throughout her life. She attended Mount Holyoke College at a time when it was uncommon for women to do so. "Perk," nicknamed by her classmates, majored in physics, with minors in chemistry and biology. In her final semester, she took a course in American economic history which required her to visit the mills along the Connecticut River and observe working conditions that would set her on the path to making so many lives better.
"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 least doing what I could, to help change those abuses." she recalled later.
After graduation, she took a teaching job in Illinois. She volunteered her free time and vacations to work at Chicago Commons and Hull House working with the poor and unemployed. Determined and convinced she said "I had to do something about unnecessary hazards to life, unnecessary poverty. It was sort of up to me."
As general secretary of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association, in 1907, she worked to keep young immigrant girls and black women from the south from prostitution. She investigated 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 she became Executive Secretary of the New York City Consumers League, working directly with Florence Kelley, focusing 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. In the halls and committee rooms of the state capitol she learned the skills to be an effective lobbyist for labor and social reforms.
On March 25, 1911, she witnessed the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in which young women jumped from the eighth and ninth floors of the building to their deaths on the street below. She later proclaimed, it was "the day the New Deal was born." Recognized as an expert in the field of worker health and safety and recommended by Theodore Roosevelt, she is hired as executive secretary of the citizen's Committee on Safety that was established to recommend practices to prevent a further tragedy in the city’s factories. Their work resulted in the most comprehensive set of laws governing workplace health and safety in the nation.
Reflecting on her years as lobbyist, investigator and researcher, Frances Perkins later said, "The extent to which this legislation in New York marked a change in American political attitudes and policies toward social responsibility can scarcely be overrated. It was, I am convinced, a turning point."
She continued to work with labor and allies to build on the legislative accomplishments in New York. 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. Newly elected governor Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Frances 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. Increasingly she became focused on devising a program of unemployment insurance. With her encouragement, Roosevelt became the first public official in the country to commit himself to unemployment insurance.
In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt successfully defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover to win the presidency of the United Staes. In 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.
"I promise to use what brains I have to meet problems with intelligence and courage."
In 1934, Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins to head a Committee on Economic Security, where she forged the blueprint of legislation finally enacted as the Social Security Act. Signed into law by the President on August 14, 1935, the Act included a system of old age pensions, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation and aid to the needy and disabled.
In 1938, Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act, also crafted with the support of Perkins, establishing a minimum wage and maximum work hours and banning child labor.
As secretary of labor during the 1930s and early 1940s, Perkins played a crucial role in the outcome of the dramatic labor uprisings that marked the era. She consistently supported the rights of workers to organize unions of their own choosing and to pressure employers through economic action. In one famous incident captured in a widely circulated newspaper photo, an indomitable Perkins strides toward the U.S. post office in Homestead with thousands of steelworkers training behind her. Denied a meeting hall by the mayor and steel executives, Perkins found an alternative site where she could inform the workers directly of their collective bargaining rights. It was also the unflappable Perkins who advised President Roosevelt to ignore the pleadings of state and local officials for federal troops to quell the 1934 San Francisco General Strike. The successful resolution of that strike as well as countless others during her tenure as labor secretary laid the foundation for the rebirth of American labor.
Before leaving the Department of Labor in June of 1945, Frances Perkins stood in the department’s auditorium, and while a full orchestra played, she shook the hands, and personally thanked every one, of the department’s 1800 employees. The months that followed were busy, as she began writing The Roosevelt I Knew, a best-selling biography of FDR published in 1946, and serving as head of the American delegation to the International Labor Organization in Paris.
The following year, President Truman appointed her to the United States Civil Service Commission, a position she held until 1953. She then began a new career of teaching, writing and public lectures, ultimately serving until her death as a lecturer at Cornell University’s new School of Industrial Relations.
In early 1963, she met IBT General President James R. Hoffa after a lecture he gave at Cornell at a Telluride reception. With an outstretched hand he said, "I always wanted to meet you Madame Perkins to tell you how good you done in ending unemployment." From underneath her tri-corn hat she smilingly rejected his compliment. "Come now, Mr. Hoffa, you know as well as I do that the war and not the New Deal overcame unemployment."
Frances Perkins suffered a stroke and died at Midtown Hospital in New York City on May 14, 1965, at the age of 85.
"There is always a large horizon... There is much to be done...
I am not going to be doing it! It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time."
Teamsters Local 638 will be hosting a free full day workshop to better equip members to setting safety standards, knowing your rights and how working together we make work better.
Time: 8:00 A.M. Please arrive early for registration
Place: Teamster Building 3rd Floor
3001 University Ave SE
Minneapolis MN 55414
Please contact Teamster office at 612-379-1533 in order that we may properly prepare for all attendees. Lunch is on us!
RESOURCES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins
http://francesperkinscenter.org/?page_id=574
http://www.aflcio.org/About/Our-History/Key-People-in-Labor-History/Frances-Perkins-1880-1965
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/why-frances-perkins-so-important-us-history
THE FRANCES PERKINS I KNEW MEETING WITH HOFFA PG 7
http://blog.francesperkinscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-Frances-Perkins-I-Knew-by-Christopher-Breiseth.pdf
