If you look up the New Deal on Wikipedia you’ll hardly see Frances Perkins‘ name mentioned. Yet, as the first female cabinet member, serving as FDR’s Secretary of Labor, she was the major force behind such revolutionary acts like minimum wage, unemployment, pensions, welfare, and also crafted laws to ban child labor.
She’s also the one to thank for the forty hour work week. On Saturday mornings you should wake up and say, “Thank you Mrs. Perkins.” Just don’t call her Frances. Apparently she didn’t like being addressed by her first name, and dressed in a matronly fashion to win over male politicians, keeping a large red envelope labeled, “Notes on the Male Mind.”
This L.A. Times Book Review provides a great account of Kirstin Downey’s recent biography of the great Frances Perkins, a book that was no easy feat to write, as apparently Mrs. Perkins’ daughter long blocked access to her mother’s papers. After eight years of Downey’s research, we get an illuminating account of a life that forever changed the way we work. Also, if she had fully gotten her way, we would have long ago had national healthcare. Let’s bring her back from the grave.
