United States Secretaries Of Labor

"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."

"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..."

"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..."

"[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."

"[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."

"[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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

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

"[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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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.""

"[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. ...""

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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.""

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

"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 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."

"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..."

"[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..."

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

"[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."

"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"

"Sadly, Perkins was right that the door might not open to other women for a "long, long time." Twenty years passed before... Dwight Eisenhower, appointed... ... as secretary of health, education and welfare... Forty-two years passed before President Gerald Ford appointed Carla Hills as secretary of housing and urban development... Sixty years later President Bill Clinton appointed three women and eleven men to his cabinet."

"Perkins was... right in knowing that the fight to maintain labor standards would be ongoing. As recently as 1991, twenty-five workers died in a factory fire in Raleigh, North Carolina. They were trapped behind locked doors and blocked fire escapes. ...Nor would she be surprised to know that unemployment and healthcare are still problems. ...But she trusted that there would be another generation... who believed in social justice and who would fight to make life better for all Americans."

"She inherited part of a tradition of service. She was its caretaker for a little while, and she passed it on to another generation. ...[T]here was a timelessness and a transcendence to the quality of her work, just a natural part of the American society..."

"During her 12 years as Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins suffered public insults, attacks on her manner and dress, lies about her birth place and ethnicity, death threats, and finally an unsuccessful impeachment attempt. Through it all she worked 15 hour days to shorten work hours for others. She crusaded for the poor and homeless, even as her own home was broken by disease and separation."

"She was able to help weave the torn fabric of a failing democracy into a new design for government that would change life for every single American."

"Prior to the creation of Social Security only 1 out of every 100 Americans had any provision at all for retirement. Their bodies worn out, in poverty and misery, many of them were shipped to... the poor farm, warehouses of death where most of the elderly went to live and to die. Poverty is tough, misery is difficult, pain and suffering are hard, but nothing equals the loss of self-esteem in a person's life, and Frances Perkins changed that."

"Frances Perkins tried to... speak to a level of discontent... unhappiness... misery... [S]he was... unusually committed, unusually brave, alone in a world of men, moving into a sphere that no woman had ever moved into before. ...for all that we owe her a good deal of thanks."

"There is no contribution that a cabinet member has made in the history of this country that has had the lasting kind of effect on all of us, and the way we live, than what Francis Perkins did."

"[I]nto this enormous churning, seemingly endless insecure society, they introduced the notion of a secure society, social security. I do not believe that the Social Security Act would have made it into law without Francis Perkins."

"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."

"[S]he had that burdensome conscience that drove her to get something done that probably made the most significant difference in the life of America than almost anything that you can name."

"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."

"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."

"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."