No, there is one woman who stands alone in US History for using moral authority to change the social contract for all Americans permanently. Yet, for two reasons, she has been historically neglected: because her progressive policies are opposed by conservatives and because she is a woman. Let’s fix that.
She first met the
mill workers when her mother brought her along doing church charity work. Working subsistence wages, seven days a week, 14 hour days, mostly women and children, no relief for illness or injury….
She didn’t blame them for their fate. She didn’t ask how to marry a rich man to avoid mill work. She asked how could she help. The first step was education. Mocked for her name ‘Fannie’, she changed it to Frances.
She first met the prostitutes when working at Hull House in Chicago. She walked the back alleys, learned how little vulnerable women earned, how newcomers and immigrants were exploited by rooming house operators and how desperate people become….
She didn’t blame them for their fate. She didn’t ask how to earn enough to escape the rough neighborhood she lived in. She analyzed the men in power, identified their failings and vanities, and figured out how to influence them to be better men. She explained how women were coerced into sex work and applied moral pressure on landlords and politicians to improve lives. Learning that her Catholicism excluded her from influential homes, she converted to Protestantism.
She saw them jump. Young women helped out the windows. One kissing a young man before plunging to her death to avoid the fire. She didn’t wonder why God had left them to their fate. She knew the Triangle Shirtwaist factory workers. She had helped many workers secure better conditions in the
garment district, but this factory’s owners refused….
She knew the victims were not to blame for their fate. And she refused to let the deaths of 23 men and 123 women and girls be in vain or forgotten. She did not seek recognition for herself, knowing that male egos rarely listen to women. But all men had mothers, and most wanted to be good in their eyes. Realizing this, she styled herself to be matronly. She met the tough, corrupt politicians of Tammany Hall without blinking and applied moral pressure on them to change the system. Fully aware of how the political machine gave small handouts to the poor for votes, she reminded the manipulators that dead constituents can’t vote, how families had been torn apart by the fire and asked them what their mothers would think of them for not acting.
And she worked hard. She cultivated a network of activists, consumer and worker groups, experts, government officials, party leaders, and wealthy influential elites. For each cause, she formed a core working group of around 50 of the most dedicated and effective from each of these, and she focused them all on making practical progress. She studied systemic problems, potential policy solutions, her adversaries and allies. She used her influence for the most progress for the most people, on every issue from a shorter workweek to worker safety, and she began driving real progress.
Her Service
President Teddy Roosevelt, who worked closely with her Hull House mentor Jane Addams, chose Frances for his Safety Commission. And, as the most qualified person to drive worker reforms in New York, this led to Frances shepherding factory legislation in New York: no smoking, rubbish removed daily, occupancy limits, drinking water, clean restrooms, fire exits, fire drills, and sprinklers. The NY workplace safety laws she orchestrated for fire escapes and more became the global standard, as she was determined that this manmade disaster never recur.
She suffered both a miscarriage and a stillbirth. Rather than cursing her fate, she built a network of influential wealthy women, nurses and public service organizations into a Maternity Center Association, and the infant & maternity death rates in New York City dropped 30% and 60% respectively.
And then the Governor of New York offered her a job reforming industry, making Frances likely the highest paid woman in government in the US, almost alone in a man’s world in 1919. She personally settled an explosive strike—literally convincing workers to dump their dynamite. Her role expanded into workmen’s compensation, and the next governor,
FDR, made her chair in 1928. She cultivated him too, decreasing her age by 2 years to match his.
She saw the bread lines of the Great Depression. She did not blame them for their fate. She understood that when the breadwinner lost his job due to automation, his wife and grown children would also join the ranks of the unemployed job seekers. She knew from her contacts in social work and industry that the economic boom had only benefited the few, and that most Americans were suffering….
As a uniquely qualified expert and the most senior woman in government, she knew that Stanford educated Hoover was intentionally cherry picking numbers to make his administration look better, and she publicly attacked the sitting president for lying about job statistics. She knew what was wrong and what needed to be done, based on her life’s work. She proposed honest economic data, and practical steps like job sharing, unemployment insurance and old age pensions.
FDR followed her lead and saw political opportunity. When the new president asked her, his trusted and accomplished reform administrator, to be the first woman Secretary of Labor—arguably his most important cabinet pick given rising unemployment—she did not think about how to become famous or rich or powerful, she gave him her priority list and asked him to back all of them before taking the job.
And thus her priorities became the blueprint for fixing the country. Public works projects, end child labor, an eight hour workday, a minimum wage, workers compensation, workplace safety, unemployment insurance and old age pensions were her demands. FDR was skeptical but agreed, leaving her to work out the details.
There is not space here to recount how Frances Perkins threw out the corrupt officials in the department, reorganized labor statistics, built the CCC and many other relief programs, got low income housing and public art works built, home construction and financing, the right to organize unions, joining international labor efforts, supporting striking unions, boosting union membership, loosening immigration procedures to allow German Jews to immigrate, and more. The poor decisions of FDR’s administration, like segregation, fascistic industrial policies, restricting immigration, almost calling in the army to put down a major west coast strike, and
American Concentration Camps, were opposed and often thwarted by Frances herself.
Her husband suffered from severe mental illness, and Frances envisioned a comprehensive social security system including healthcare and welfare, like the rest of the developed world. But the politicians had other ideas. Still, she managed to shepherd the Social Security Act into law, with FDR saying that it couldn’t be undone as it was funded with worker contributions. While Truman replaced her, her life’s work shaped the lives of all Americans. Although she never claimed due credit, she gave countless speeches protecting her programs.
Her Legacy
Prior to Perkins, infant and maternal mortality were worse than the rest of the developed world. A worker might start working in a mill or factory at age 10. They would work a seven day week of 14 hour days in unsafe conditions. Wages were exploitative. If injured or fired, they would receive no compensation. Unions were generally small, typically focused on limited, skilled jobs held by older men. Low income housing was also dangerous, and company housing created a system of industrial servitude. Workers who were lucky enough to live to old age had little or no money to survive. Rather than help, corrupt government officials further exploited their misery by siphoning off relief funds or extorting lawful immigrants with deportation threats.
“The golf links lie so near the mills,
That nearly every day,
The laboring children can look out,
And see the men at play.”
— Little Toilers by Sara Claghorn,
one of Frances’ favorites.
Perhaps you have benefited by not dying in childbirth, attending middle school, or benefited at work from drinking water, clean ventilated restrooms, regular trash pickup, a minimum wage, a 40 hour workweek, overtime, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, or social security. Don’t thank the men who opposed change and then took credit for progress. Don’t thank the men who did nothing except help themselves. Thank Frances, who fought for universal rights for all workers and their families.
Why did she receive so little credit?
Frances prioritized her cause over her personal gain. Ever a stoic, practical Mainer, she didn’t complain when her husband lost his fortune and then his mind. She didn’t complain about her ungrateful and unstable daughter. She helped them, privately supporting them, housing and caring for them even when she had no home for herself, while doing all the work above, without anyone in public knowing. She avoided the spotlight, due to misogyny and to be more effective in the background letting others take credit for her work. Carrying more responsibility than any other woman in US history, when the stress got to her, she retreated to a convent to live days in silence, asking God how she could do more.
Frances Perkins’ power came from her moral authority and her drive to work hard, not from her looks or wealth or fame. She never became rich. She taught and lived in a dorm in her old age, because she needed the income and housing. She strictly avoided public attention. Her students carried her coffin. Even her best biographer’s publisher felt obligated to put FDR on the cover, knowing that he got credit for the New Deal that Frances built for America. She is absent from many lists of the greatest women in American history, although there is no question that Frances exercised more power than any other American woman ever has and accomplished more for all Americans than any man.
Lessons
Many Americans today, especially our politicians, rule by self-interest and feel-good instincts. Everyone wants to be rich and famous. Popularity is driven by image and social media trends. Attention getting soundbites and posing for popular causes are the political currency of today. Rationally, weak minded people join, figuring they can’t be beat. And the other party has no hesitation in exercising power for their own gain.
I believe most Democrats understand and care about the suffering of common people, are willing to do the work needed and have the competence to change American lives significantly. But we need more courage in our convictions. It is morally wrong that children are dying of preventable diseases like measles. It is morally wrong that families are being separated, imprisoned and some are deported to random countries. It is morally wrong that our history is being erased and that our government now supports tyranny instead of pursuing the ideals of our once self-evident unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Corruption at the highest level of government is morally wrong. Systemic racism, bigotry and discrimination are morally wrong. Denying people food and healthcare is morally wrong. Allowing mass extinctions due to massive carbon pollution is morally wrong. Instead of acting on all of these moral imperatives, too often we cave selectively.
First, we need to recognize women and let them lead. We must learn from Frances. We must make meaningful change for everyone. We must be bold. An equivalent change to the workweek to Frances’ would give overtime to anyone working more than 20 hours a week. We must not hesitate to exercise power to benefit all Americans. We must remake the social contract to benefit the many instead of the few. We must be selfless in pursuing the public good. We must do the hard work required of us. And we must not rest until the change we deliver is irreversible. Maybe we will be forgotten, but if we don’t try our best, we won’t be forgiven.
PostScript
The narrative here is primarily my summary of Kirstin Downey’s definitive biography,
The Woman Behind the New Deal, supplemented with information gleaned from visiting the
Frances Perkins National Monument,
public record and from my general knowledge, and formulated in my own viewpoint. If you have specific issues, please put them in the comments, and I will try to respond. Thanks. CF
