Frances Perkins of Worcester

Have you visited the Worcester Public Library's Frances Perkins branch? Today is the anniversary of Frances Perkins' birth in 1880. She was quite an accomplished person for any era but consider what challenges she had to face as a woman of her times!

Although born in Boston, Fannie Perkins was raised here in Worcester from the age of two. She attended Worcester Classical High School, one of only a few female students to attend; it was considered a "college preparatory school" - a path few women of her time trod (the school no longer exists; it was replaced by Doherty HS in 1966). After graduating, she attended Mt. Holyoke College and there became socially conscious when she learned about unfair and unsafe labor practices in an economic history course. When she attended a lecture by Florence Kelley, the head of the National Consumer's League, she became an agent for social change.

Back in Worcester, she was a teacher and a community activist before moving to a Chicago suburb in 1904 to continue her teaching career. There she volunteered at Hull House (an immigrant and workers' aid society and residence). As often happened, Perkins worked to collect wages owed to workers whose employers tried to cheat them.

In 1907 she moved to New York City to go to graduate school. She saw the utter poverty and dangerous conditions in Hell's Kitchen, a NYC neighborhood known for crime and disease. Perkins received her M.A. from Columbia University. Her first job post-graduation was as secretary of the New York Consumer's League. She was a witness to the sweat-shop conditions of low-level workers. And then came the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in the City's Greenwich Village neighborhood: 123 young women and girls, and 23 men died in that fire because the management of the factory had locked them in. Some were burned to death while others died jumping out the 8th thru 10th floor windows, in a vain effort to escape the fire. The victims, all garment workers, ranged in age from 14 to 43.

In 1906 Fannie legally changed her name to Frances, and in 1913 she married the economist Paul Wilson. Way ahead of her time, she kept her birth surname upon marriage. They had one daughter.

She entered a larger stage when the governor appointed her to NY's state Industrial Board. At a time where workers spent all their waking hours at work, she advocated to reduce the work week to a "mere" 54 hours per week. She also worked to establish workman's compensation for workers injured on the job and unemployment insurance.

President Franklin Roosevelt chose her for his Secretary of Labor, thereby becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the Federal government. Perkins first refused, but accepted when the president agreed to let her return to her now-institutionalized husband on weekends, and that he support her plans for broad-reaching reforms. She also had the enthusiastic support of the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who said that the position was "could be better filled by her than by anyone else, man or woman, with whom the President was acquainted".

Perkins was the driving force behind the establishment of the Social Security System and worked for the enactment of minimum wage laws. She believed employees should be able to collectively bargain for workers' rights. And she was instrumental in ending child labor in this country. She was the impetus behind the New Deal - and so much more. She served as Labor Secretary for 12 years, under two presidents, Roosevelt and Truman.

Would you like to read more about her professional and personal achievements? See these Frances Perkins and social justice downloadable items.