Women Politicians In The United States

"Frances Perkins's name and the dates of her birth and death are carved on her headstone. So are the words:Secretary of Labor of U.S.A. 1933-1945"

"[Upon accepting] Truman's appointment [to the] three-member Civil Service Commission (CSC)... For six and a half years Perkins prodded the government to be more efficient, to cut down on red tape and to simplify rules and regulations."

"The book she wrote, The Roosevelt I Knew... is still considered one of the best biographies of Roosevelt."

"[T]he idea of social work and social workers was very new. Determined to learn what was known, Perkins took night courses from Professor ... famous for his idea of "surplus civilization," or belief that with industrialization there would be enough... for every person to have a decent life. "I just lapped it up there," Perkins said later..."

"At and , Perkins was immersed in the lives of people who wore ragged clothes, lived crowded together in rickety buildings, suffered from malnutrition and disease, and were paid what amounted to pennies for the hours they worked. ...Before long, Perkins decided to leave teaching... [d]etermined to be a social worker... [T]he Philadelphia Research and Protective Association ...formed ...to investigate ...pimps, thieves, and unscrupulous employers... preying upon newly arrived immigrant girls and black women from the South. Perkins applied, was hired, and moved... in 1907... She uncovered a variety of abuses and devised programs to help... young women. She lobbied officials to get regulations and legislation passed. ...[S]he gave speeches to inform people and raise money..."

"Perkins was graduated in June 1902. It was the year... that a record number of immigrants came to America... For two years, Perkins had various teaching jobs close to home. Then in 1904 she went to teach... a... girl's school in Lake Forrest, Illinois. Whenever she had free time she went into nearby Chicago... She... spent time at ... and ... two of America's most famous settlement houses... in the slums where well-educated people... settled to share poor people's lives and help them improve their situation."

"For Perkins being religious meant that she had a "duty" to help people. She agreed with the words of , the founder of Mount Holyoke, that people "should live for God and do something.""

"Perkins was influenced by many books that exposed horrendous situations, including 's book How the Other Half Lives, an exposé... that "deeply moved" Perkins."

"During her senior year Frances... heard speak. ...[K]nown as a "raging furnace" about issues of social justice, Kelley had successfully fought to get [Illinois] laws passed... to prohibit child labor and to limit the number of hours that women worked. According to Perkins, Kelley's speech "first opened my mind to... the work which became my vocation.""

"What she liked about [Theodore Roosevelt] were his "progressive ideas," or his ideas that everybody should get a "square deal"... not just big business owners. ...Roosevelt thought it was time for reforms—time to put some limits on big business, to drive out corrupt politicians, to provide better opportunities for working people, and to improve conditions in the cities. ..."Out of the period ...a whole generation ...emerged... who had a great passion for social justice," Perkins said years later."

"Well... he'll only win that way once, I imagine. He doesn't look as if he'd be very popular with people. What I mean is, he doesn't look as if he really likes people."

"Who is that tall, thin young man with the pince-nez, who seems constantly to be looking down his nose at people?"

"I shall always be most grateful to him. He made me rediscover that I had a mind. It had lain fallow, I am afraid, since my Mount Holyoke days."

"I never really saw really poor people before... My parents always told me nobody had to be poor—that they wouldn't be if they weren't shiftless or didn't spend everything they earned on drink. I don't understand how Mama and Papa could be so mistaken! ...Yes, I guess I do. 'There are none so blind as those who will not see'—and that's a favorite quotation of Papa's too!"

"From this day forward, I will be a Doer of the Word and not as Hearer only, whenever and wherever I see the need."

"Women lobbyists, whatever their size, are looked at askance... Men seem to have trouble believing we have brains enough to understand the causes we're championing. ...Maybe I should have said most men."

"[I]t afterwards, seems in some way to have paid the debt society owed to those children, those young people who lost their lives in the Triangle Fire. It's their contribution to the people of New York that we have this really magnificent series of legislative acts to protect and improve the administration of the law regarding the protection of work people in the City of - in the State of New York."

"So that beginning with that report coming in as it did in 1915, it was laid on the table before the legislature, and by this time, was the speaker of the House and well on the way to be governor. We had a very favorable audience and much of the legislation was enacted into law, oh, within a couple of years..."

"Although their commission was to devise ways and means to prevent accidents by fire in the State of New York, we... kept expanding the function of the commission 'till it came to be the report on [un]sanitary conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions... all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees, including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these subjects. I may say we did."

"So we proceeded and it proved to be a most educative experience. This factory investigating commission was continued... for four years and its report, is... seven volumes. ...and it's in great detail ...the recommendations, the testimony. We went all over the state. I was a young person then and certainly not fit for service on any super commission but I was the chief—I was the investigator, and in charge of the investigations and this was an extraordinary opportunity... to get into factories to make a report and be sure it was going to be heard."

"I remember... we heard the engines and we heard the screams and rushed out and rushed over... We could see this building from Washington Square and the people had just begun to jump when we got there. They had been holding... standing in the windowsills... crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this... net to catch people... they couldn't wait any longer. They began to jump. The window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. The net broke, they [fell] a terrible distance, the weight of the bodies was so great... that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped... It was a horrifying spectacle. We... felt as though we had been part of it all. The next day people... in all parts of the city... began to mull around and gather and talk."

"This made a terrible impression on the people of the State of New York. I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere. It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn't have been. We were sorry. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! We didn't want it that way. We hadn't intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a factory. It was a terrible thing for the people... to face."

"Everybody who jumped, and a good many did jump from the 9th and 10th floors, was killed. The other people who died were all people who were burned or smothered by the smoke in the factory itself."

"[T]his was a terrible accident; 147 young people, they were all young men and women, were killed, lost their lives and a number of others were badly injured. Some of them were injured after the fire in the elevator shaft had gone out. Of course the boys that ran the elevator had gone... fled. Some of the people tried to get out by jumping into the elevator shaft and grabbing the cables and letting themselves down... Some of them fell, some of them were awkward and... couldn't hold on. Some of them merely blistered their hands, took the skin and flesh off their hands coming down on the cables and there were a number of people sadly injured."

"1911... was the year of the great Triangle Fire in New York City, a terrible industrial accident which burned out the contents of a 9th and 10th floor loft building factory... It caught on fire and the blaze spread very rapidly. There was only one means of exit available, the other two means of exits were the elevator which was ablaze almost immediately as the flames got into this open shaft and spread from floor to floor and the second exit was locked. It was an exit to the roof... it would have saved most of the people in that building if it had not been locked. It had been locked by the employer himself because he feared... he would be robbed either by his employees or by the outsider."

"The quality of his being one with his people, of having no artificial or natural barriers between him and them, made it possible for him to be a leader without ever being or thinking of being a dictator."

"He didn’t like concentrated responsibility. Agreement with other people who he thought were good, right minded, and trying to do the right thing by the world was almost as necessary to him as air to breathe."

"As a student and professional social worker, I was taking an active part in proposals to use... legislative authority... to correct social abuses—long hours, low wages, bad housing, child labor, and unsanitary conditions."

"Like many people, I was an ardent admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. ...He had recommended to the people 's book How the Other Half Lives. I had read it, and Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural address of 1905, and had straightaway felt that the pursuit of social justice would be my vocation."

"The process of recovery is not a simple one. ... We cannot be satisfied merely with makeshift arrangements which will tide us over the present emergencies. We must devise plans that will not merely alleviate the ills of today, but will prevent, as far as it is humanly possible to do so, their recurrence in the future."

"[A]lthough the astonishing growth of industry in America was amazing, it was also awful. Amazing with such inventions as the telephone (1876, four years before Frances... was born); the phonograph (1877...) the electric light (1879...); and the first airplane (1903, one year after Perkins graduated from college). But awful with rich business owners... and poor workers living in... city slums. ...Awful with dangerous working conditions in most mines, factories, and sweatshops. ...Perkins started her junior year at Mount Holyoke in 1900. ...Bathtubs were found in one out of seven American homes. ...Big businesses were thriving, and businessmen had enormous financial and political power."

"During her lifetime, a time when women faced severe restrictions and prejudices, Frances Perkins achieved many firsts—first woman head of an industrial commission, first woman in a governor's cabinet, first woman in a president's cabinet. But never without public furor."

"Despite hate mail and harsh treatment by the press, her husband's chronic mental illness, and a resolution of impeachment against her, Frances Perkins successfully fought to make life better for working people by establishing unemployment insurance, minimum wages, maximum hours, safety regulations, and Social Security."

"She was aware from her experience with the legislature in New York that labor legislation, like oysters, could be swallowed only in certain seasons, and she was prepared to work on whatever at the moment seemed most likely to succeed."

"When she and Roosevelt had first discussed the possibility of her appointment, she had given him a list of policies... Most dealt directly with unemployment: public works, minimum wages, maximum hours, unemployment insurance, old age and retirement insurance, abolition of child labor, creation of a federal employment service, federal aid to the states for direct relief and promotion within the states of state labor laws. Immigration was peripheral."

"She intended... to lessen the bureau's importance in the department, chiefly by increasing the strength of the other five bureaus: Labor Statistics, Women, Children, and the Employment and Conciliation services. Though Immigration was the largest, in her view it had little to do with the country's problems."

"A day or two later she returned to the office after dinner to work, not expecting to find anyone in the building except the night watchman. ...The elevator door opened directly on Gaarson, his brother and several other men. They were rifling the files. ...pulling out the folders, going through them, taking papers out and piling them on the floor. ..."If you have anything personal here, I suggest you come back tomorrow after the department is open, and that you tell Mr. White [Robe Carl White, First Assistant Secrtetary of Labor] what you want. ...Meanwhile I ask you to leave the building now." The "now" resounded. On the faces of many of the more thuglike men she could see a determination not to leave. Gaarson... decided to go... After they left, she telephoned for an additional guard and waited until he came. The next day she changed the locks on the cabinets. Once she had some programs on unemployment started, she would see what could be done about prosecution."

"She set about eliminating the group as quickly and as quietly as possible. She did not call in the newspapers; her purpose was not to blacken the Hoover administration or to lay charges... but to reorganize the largest bureau in her department. Gaarson was asked to submit his resignation as Special Assistant Secretary of Labor... Sixteen members of the force, among them Doak's brother and nephew... were put on furlough... and the other seventy-one members were informed that, for lack of funds... their jobs... were abolished."

"[S]he had decided to abolish the group... But first she went to talk with the President. She saw him privately in his office... told him briefly about the force, quoted the report of Hoover's commission and described what she had found in the department. He was astonished and at the same time amused. "It's a great joke," he said, "that it should be you who runs into crooks. Go ahead and clean them out. ...""

"Doak... spoke often of the "radical element" among the laborers; he stressed constantly the threat to the country from "alien agitators"; and in order to find and deport aliens illegally in the country he had formed a special corps of investigators... Section 24 ...Section 24 of the permitted a Secretary of Labor, without regard to civil service requirements, to appoint to the bureau any persons he thought specially qualified to enforce the contract labor provisions of the immigration laws. ...In [First Assistant Secrtetary of Labor, Robe Carl] White's opinion most of the men Doak had appointed ...were dishonest. They had been recruited, White said, "out of the gutter.""

"To a greater extent than she realized [The Bureau of Immigration] dominated the department. Its various activities absorbed 3659 of the 5113 employees and nearly $10 million of the $13 million budget, even though the number of immigrants and aliens in the country... was fast declining."

"[W]hen the department moved to a new building... she opened the cafeteria with a ruling that all employees, regardless of color, could use it. ...[T]o one white man who complained, she explained it not in terms of racial justice, but of cockroaches... sensible housekeeping."

"Because Doak seemed uncertain what to say, she... asked general questions... She quickly concluded that he had little information. ...[H]e could not describe any ideas they had discussed for combating the Depression. When she mentioned a program of public works as a method of providing employment and increasing purchasing power, he seemed to have no ideas beyond... "it'll cost a lot of money and wreck the Treasury." ...[S]he questioned Doak about the department's chief problems. "Well, the immigration business is always serious," he said. "We have lots of trouble with those people who come in illegally." ...The previous week a New York police lieutenant ...had come to her office to describe how a group within the Bureau of Immigration was extorting money from aliens. ...Specifically, the lieutenant had warned her to watch for ...the leaders of the Section 24 group. Doak had created the special section and appointed both men. ...It was not the sort of labor problem that Perkins had discussed with Roosevelt, but here it was in her department."

"So it was done: one administration, Democratic, succeeded another, Republican. ...She had heard nothing from the Department of Labor; her predecessor, ... did not plan any ceremonial welcome. ...Except for an occasional fee from an article or speech, she had only her salary as a cabinet officer, $13,000 a year, to support herself, her child and husband. Sussana was doing well at the Brearly School and [her husband, Paul] Wilson was in a sanitarium... able, on occasion to come home. ...In Washington Perkins felt she... could afford, only a small apartment or a single room."

"[F]or roughly twenty years, from 1925 to 1945, on social legislation hers was the dominant voice at the ear of the leader of the Democratic party, and among the party's most lasting achievements in that period are several for which she was the prime mover."

"[B]ecause historians and biographers of have reported only the first half of her career, and those of Roosevelt only the second, its continuity has been lost."

"She disliked personal publicity and often would do nothing to counter criticism even when it was patently unfair."

"Not only was she one of the most important women of her generation, but even today, because of her work on minimum wage and on accident, unemployment and old age insurance, she has a hand in our daily lives. ...[H]er achievements have been too little appreciated."

"Perkins' personality informed all her work. ...[W]hat Perkins chose to do was determined by her religion. Many Democrats supported the because it attracted votes; others, for humanitarian reasons; Perkins, "for Jesus' sake," because it brought the City of God closer to the cities of toil and industry."

"Frances Perkins brings to the Cabinet as Secretary of Labor the many years of training and experience which step by step have rounded out the preparation for her great responsibility. Even with the contribution of her vivid personality, the press, generally speaking, pays her the tribute of reporting the wisdom of the words and acts rather than idle "gossip" about the "first woman Cabinet member.""