the woman behind the new deal by kirstin downey

She first sought FDR’s reassurance that the new administration would pursue several ambitious federal programs to help the poor, working people, and the elderly – which would eventually become signature achievements of the New Deal. But she did not accept the nomination immediately. “I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen,” Perkins said.

Labor Secretary after winning the presidential election in 1932.

She eventually served as head of the New York Industrial Commission, then as state Labor Commissioner under Governor Franklin Roosevelt. Having personally witnessed the horror of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City, Perkins became a passionate advocate for workers’ rights and safety. In so doing, she rejected the views of her parents who had told her as a child that “poverty was the result of alcohol or laziness… and that little girls shouldn’t concern themselves with such things.” Holyoke University, she was drawn to social work as the Progressive movement of the early 20th century took shape. When Christopher Breiseth, former CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, asked Perkins to identify her proudest achievement toward the end of her life, she said without hesitation in her clipped and carefully cultivated Boston Brahmin accent: “Two words: Social Security.”īorn in 1880, Perkins grew up in a middle-class household in Worcester, Massachusetts. Perkins coaxed, cajoled, and practically willed the program into being, undaunted by formidable obstacles (including the question of its very constitutionality). If FDR was the father of Social Security, the first-ever female Labor Secretary was the mother. Like other pioneering women from the first half of the 20th century, Perkins deserves to be honored before Women’s History Month 2019 ends. She is the woman without whom we likely would not have Social Security today: Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins – alone in a sea of men, wearing a slim black dress with white buttons and a fashionable tricorn hat. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act of 1935, the dignitaries crowded around the president stare intently at the legislation on his desk.

The woman behind the new deal by kirstin downey