Women Politicians In The United States

"[B]efore she accepted the offer she had to know if the President-elect would support her in advocating the programs she would wish to pursue as secretary of labor. ...[S]he pulled out a little slip of paper ...the list of goals about which she felt passionate. Among other items on the list were laws for minimum wages and maximum hours, for unemployment insurance and old-age insurance. ...Only when he firmly assured, "I'll back you," could she think about... accepting the offer. And so... on March 4, 1933 Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in the United States Cabinet... The legacy of her years in office continues to affect the life of every U.S. citizen."

"[Perkins' daughter] Susanna's death... opened up one small box of personal documents, which... chronicled the mental health problems and physician's reports on Susanna and Frances's husband Paul Wilson, who both suffered from bipolar disorder. During her lifetime, Susanna had denied that her father had ever been ill... allowing it to appear that Frances had been an overly controlling mother, or that she had pretended that her husband was mentally ill to get rid of him. Concealing that information allowed allowed a generation... to believe that Frances had been a failure as a wife and a mother."

"[H]istorians putting the records together closer to the era in which Frances Perkins lived would have known that Frances was both a suffrage leader and a labor advocate, but scholars born later did not easily make that connection."

"I was badly bitten by the idea that I could have a place in the theatre... I harbored that idea for a little while. It would have been a great pleasure, but I soon dropped it because I got principle..."

"And best (or worst) of all, I grew old during that time, so that now I am a settled and mature old spinster with an opinion on every topic under heaven... I've also acquired... a sense of humor—so that I no longer take myself and my doings seriously..."

"Social work was an infant then. ...I just lapped it up there... I discovered... that I had a mind that starts, operates on its own scheme, inquires, penetrates, goes to the bottom of things, puts two and two together and comes to some logical conclusions that have authority."

"If facts were to be found, I was to devise ways to prevent it or overcome it either by social representation or by legislation at the municipal or state level. ...Ten cent lodging houses, employment agencies, the offices of the Philadelphia political "gangs," and the two police courts all became my haunts..."

"[I] wrote to anybody I knew who had any connection at all with charities to say I wanted a job, but had no experience."

"What is the trouble? How can we cure this? ...What can be done? ...I had to do something about unnecessary hazards to life, unnecessary poverty. It was sort of up to me. This feeling... sprang out of a period of great philosophical confusion which overtakes all young people..."

"['s speech] first opened my mind to the necessity for and the possibility of the work which became my vocation."

"Like many young people, I was an ardent admirer of Theodore Roosevelt... Out of the period that I was in school a whole generation, particularly women emerged, but men too, who had a great passion for social justice..."

"I discovered for the first time, under the stimulus of that course and of that teacher, that I had a mind... My intellectual pride was aroused and the grim determination awakened me to get the most I could out of college."

"One of the girls who was among my best friends came from a poverty-stricken home. Her family was delightful and I used to wonder how such things could happen..."

"I am extraordinarily the product of my grandmother... Scarcely a week goes by that I don't find myself saying, "As my grandmother used to say," and then repeating something that apparently has been a guiding principle all my life."

"My generation was perhaps the first that openly and actively asserted—at least some of us did—the separateness of women and their personal independence in the family relationship..."

"We were in a terrible situation... Banks were closing. The economic life of the country was almost at a standstill."

"I'm the last leaf on the New Deal tree, and I think perhaps I've clung here too long already."

"Harry Bridges is a card-carrying Communist, Franklin, but that's the single black mark against him and isn't illegal. I just don't believe a man should be punished for what he believes or thinks."

"I thought witch-hunting was a thing of the past, but that's what this 'red-baiting' immigration squad is doing. They see communists behind every foreign name."

"The Employment Service is all but dead. It needs resurrecting and reorganizing. The Statistical Bureau needs revamping too, so it will be an honest fact-finding body. As for the Immigration Service—well, really, Franklin, it is altogether too reactionary for today's world."

"Just let the people know that they matter to you, that your plan is to mobilize the government to help them. If you can give them hope that things will be better, they'll bless you, Franklin."

"Would you leave me free to do what I think is best for the Labor Department, Franklin? I'd try to keep you informed, but I wouldn't always be able to... [D]irect unemployment relief, a program of public works, minimum wage and hour laws, unemployment and old age insurance, abolition of child labor... These things need doing no matter who is Secretary of Labor."

"Organized labor has always had one of its own people as Secretary and will expect to continue to have. I do not qualify."

"It is all-important to keep the human touch in whatever we do... This is the machine age... and we should make machines work for us—but let us not act like robots ourselves!"

"I would not be where I am today if it were not for you and others like you. ...I do not regard you as paying tribute to me personally, but to Frances Perkins as a symbol of the genuine desire to bring happiness to those who have it not in their own power. So that industry may bear down kindly instead of bitterly. ...I promise to use the brains I have to meet problems with intelligence and courage. ...I promise that I will be candid about what I know, of the Labor Department or of the state of industry in this state and in country."

"To know him is to love him... He's honest, high-minded, intelligent and—above all—independent. I have worked with him in government for years. There has never been any conflict between his official duties and his religious beliefs, I am confident there never will be!"

"His illness had changed him... Having known what trouble is to the very depths of his being, he can now sympathize with other people who have problems. I think he could make a very good governor of the state of New York."

"I know what horror tales you've been hearing from manufacturers... They've told you they can't possibly operate under a forty-eight hour law. Well, they said the same thing twelve years ago when the Fifty-Four Hour Bill was under consideration. So, gentlemen, let us look at the facts. ...[T]here have been fewer industrial accidents, because the workers do not so often become careless through fatigue. Gentlemen, there is every reason to believe things will improve still further when the working day is shorter. ...A million women will be affected by the law... you don't need to fear employers... [T]hose million women have suffrage... Let this bill that means so much to them go to a vote. They'll be grateful to you!"

"I think any compulsion other than moral compulsion is wrong. Let disputes be settled by public opinion, not statute."

"The day I need an armed bodyguard is the day I admit my job's too much for a woman."

"Gentlemen... let me make a plain statement. As I see it, the Labor Commission is duty-bound always to consider two things about every recommendation. One: what will this provide in the way of health, comfort, decency and security? Two: what will it cost?"

"The mothers don't want to bring their children [in for child labor at a vegetable cannery in Auborn, NY]—they need to. ...That need will never cease until employers pay decent wages! There ought to be a law assuring minimum pay, as well as one limiting hours worked!"

"His arrogance isn't what disturbs me so much as his self-centeredness... He doesn't seem to care about anything that doesn't concern him personally."

"You showed me which, of all the 'hats' a social worker wears, suits me best. ...[i.e.,] You convinced me that man-made evils can be corrected if people can be made to care enough. I intend to make them, if it's in my power."

"Upon hearing that Franklin D. Roosevelt won his NY state senate seat because many thought they were voting for Theodore Roosevelt."

"Always remember, Peggy, it's matrimonial suicide to be jealous when you have a really good reason."

"You know, that's the only good thing about divorce; you get to sleep with your mother."

"A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self — in the mirror of some woman's eyes."

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them."

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals [with] no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff."

"You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world."

"I have resolved to grow old, naturally and gracefully, content in the knowledge that the greatest intellects are the homeliest ones, and that the height of sophistication is simplicity."

"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the children of Texas!"

"The regular Democratic Party and its organization was run by men who looked on women as little more than machine parts."

"Poor George, he can't help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

"But I'll tell you something sort of interesting. There's something, you know, there's something a little scary about funny women. Well, they're threatening. And there was a survey done one time where they asked women what they were most afraid of from men. And the -- their response was they were most afraid of being hit or beaten or hurt from men. And they asked men what they were most afraid of from women, and they said being laughed at."

"Oh, absolutely. No question about it. And the state of Texas, when I was governor, we built an awful lot of prisons. And to be frank with you, I made a deal, and the deal was that I would help pass the legislation and be for building a lot more prisons in Texas if I could get rehab programs for people who were alcoholics and drug abusers because I knew that over 80 percent of the crime committed in Texas was committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs."

"He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. [about George Bush, Sr.]"

"… we're going to tell how the cow ate the cabbage."