A

PERKINS, FRANCES 1882-1965

SECRETARY OF LABOR (1933-1945)

First Woman Cabinet Member

Frances Perkins was the first American woman appointed to a cabinet post. As secretary of labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, she was a leading force in New Deal labor policy.

Background

Born in Boston, Frances Perkins was a vigorous advocate for social justice. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1902, she became a teacher. In 1904, when she took a job at a school in Lake Forest, Illinois, she began volunteer work in Chicago settlement houses, learning firsthand the problems of the poor. In 1907 she moved to Philadelphia, where she became general secretary of the Research and Protective Association. After moving to New York in 1909 and earning an A.M. in economics and sociology at Columbia University in 1910, she became secretary of the New York Consumers' League (1910-1912). She worked to address the problems of working conditions and lobbied the state legislature for industrial reform. While she was secretary of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York (1912-1915), she exposed the horrors of sweatshops.

New York State Appointments

In 1918 Gov. Alfred E. Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission, where she headed the Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration and worked to settle strikes. She lost that post when Smith was defeated in the 1920 gubernatorial election, but when Smith was elected governor again in 1922, she regained her job on the renamed New York State Industrial Board and took over the handling of workmen's compensation cases. Smith made her head of the board in 1926, and in 1928 he named her state industrial commissioner. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became governor in 1929 he reappointed Perkins, who became a trusted adviser. She worked tirelessly for the eight-hour day, stricter factory-safety laws, and protective labor laws for women and children. When the Depression hit, she encouraged Roosevelt to implement state unemployment insurance as well as relief payments to the poor.

Madame Secretary

After Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he named Perkins to his cabinet. As U.S. secretary of labor, Perkins enlarged the department's Bureau of Women and Children and put its Mediation and Conciliation Service on firm footing. She played a commanding role in developing the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. As chair of the president's Committee on Economic Security, Perkins contributed substantially to crafting the Social Security Act of 1935. During World War II Perkins used her power as secretary of labor to resist conservatives' efforts to undo the labor legislation of the 1930s. After Roosevelt's death in 1945, she resigned her cabinet post, and from that year until her death in 1965 she served on the Civil Service Commission.