Frances Perkins

A Mount Holyoke professor named Annah May Soule sent her students into factories to write down what they saw, and Perkins, a Republican stationer's daughter reading chemistry and physics, never got the assignment out of her head. She graduated in 1902, taught school, and volunteered at Chicago settlement houses including Hull House, where Jane Addams was in charge. In 1905 she joined the Episcopal Church and changed her name from Fannie to Frances. Then Philadelphia and the Wharton School for economics, two years of social work, a membership in the Socialist Party that she gave up as too idealistic, and a master's in economics and sociology from Columbia in 1910.

On March 25, 1911 she watched the Triangle Shirtwaist factory burn with the stairwells locked and 146 workers inside, and she blamed the law rather than the fire. She ran the New York Committee on Safety after that, investigated the Binghamton factory fire of 1913 that killed 63, and pushed a 54-hour bill through the legislature in 1912 by counting the votes herself. Al Smith put her on the state Industrial Commission in 1919, at 8,000 dollars, which made her the highest-paid woman in New York government. Roosevelt made her the state's first industrial commissioner in 1929, running an agency of 1,800. In 1933 he made her secretary of labor, the first woman in any president's cabinet. She chaired the committee that drafted the Social Security Act of 1935 and held the job for 12 years, longer than anyone since.

Her husband, the economist Paul Wilson, began showing signs of mental illness less than two years after their daughter Susanna was born in December 1916, and he was institutionalized repeatedly for the rest of the marriage. Perkins had pulled back from public work after the birth. She went back because the family now needed what she earned, and she stayed the earner until Wilson died in 1952, at which point she left the Civil Service Commission. Her biographer Kirstin Downey records that Susanna showed manic-depressive symptoms too. Perkins had kept her own surname from the start and defended the right to it in court, and when her 1919 confirmation stalled, state senators cited the choice as proof she was a radical. She was effective and cold, and the public never warmed to her.

She is buried at Glidden Cemetery in Newcastle, Maine, under the name Mrs. Paul Wilson, which is what her neighbors called her. Almost everything else has gone the other way. Carter renamed the Labor Department headquarters the Frances Perkins Building in 1980 and the Postal Service put her on a stamp the same year. Her Washington house and the Maine homestead are both National Historic Landmarks, and in December 2024 Biden made the homestead a national monument. The Episcopal Church keeps a feast day for her. Mount Holyoke runs a program in her name for women who come back after 24 to finish a degree.

Frances Perkins's life against the full span of the corpus.

• New York 54-hour bill law
  Capped the hours women and children could be worked. She whipped the votes herself. 1912
• Immigration and Naturalization Service company
  Built inside her department. She abolished the Bureau of Immigration squad that seized people without due process. 1933
• Social Security Act law
  She chaired the Committee on Economic Security that drafted it 1935
• Fair Labor Standards Act law
  The federal minimum wage and the first durable federal limits on child labor 1938
• The Roosevelt I Knew book
  Her account of the president she had known since 1910 1946

• 1902 aged ~22 Takes a degree in chemistry and physics at Mount Holyoke A professor's factory-inspection assignment set the direction of the rest.
• March 25, 1911 aged 30 Witnesses the Triangle Shirtwaist fire 146 workers died behind locked doors. She left the Consumers League for fire safety work within months.
• 1913 aged ~33 Marries Paul Caldwell Wilson and keeps her own name She later defended the right to it in court.
• February 18, 1919 aged 38 Confirmed to the New York Industrial Commission after a fight Senators cited her keeping her maiden name as evidence of radicalism. The job paid 8,000 dollars.
• January 14, 1929 aged 48 Governor Roosevelt makes her New York's first industrial commissioner She ran an agency of 1,800 into the Depression.
• March 4, 1933 aged 52 Becomes secretary of labor and the first woman in a presidential cabinet She took the job only after Roosevelt agreed to her list of programs.
• August 14, 1935 aged 55 Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act with Perkins standing behind him
• 1939 aged ~59 Refuses to deport Harry Bridges and is attacked in Congress for it The Supreme Court eventually vindicated Bridges.
• June 30, 1945 aged 65 Leaves the Labor Department after 12 years Truman put her on the Civil Service Commission instead.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. served in his cabinet for all 12 years
• Eleanor Roosevelt 1884–1962
  First Lady and human rights advocate who chaired the UN committee that drafted the Universal Declaration. ally in the same administration
• Jane Addams 1860–1935
  Social worker and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who founded Hull House and the settlement house movement. worked under her at Hull House
• Harry Bridges 1901–1990
  Led West Coast longshore workers through the 1934 strike and headed the ILWU for decades. refused to deport him
• Harry S. Truman 1884–1972
  33rd President who authorized the atomic bomb and implemented the Marshall Plan. replaced her at Labor and moved her to the Civil Service Com