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Frances Perkins may not be a household name, but as Women’s History Month kicks off, the former Secretary of Labor is getting the recognition she deserves. Perkins, the first woman to hold a US Cabinet post, will be inducted into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame at the University of Maine.
The Portland Press Herald reports The Maine Women’s Hall of Fame was established in 1990 by the Business and Professional Women/Maine Futurama Foundation to honor women who have improved the lives of other women and made a lasting impact. Its annual induction ceremony is usually held on the third Saturday of March as part of Women’s History Month.
Perkins was born in Boston and lived most of her life in New York and Washington DC, but she spent every August in Maine in seclusion with her family.
A Passion for Helping Others
Unlike most women of her time, Perkins, born in 1880, postponed marriage, choosing to concentrate on her education. She studied sociology and economics at Mount Holyoke College. She continued her education at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. Then she began to follow her passion – helping working people.
She began her career at Jane Adams’ Hull House settlement house in Chicago. Hull House pioneered providing education and wholesome recreation to help working class people move out of poverty. She moved to New York to serve as the executive secretary of the Consumers League of New York. There she championed workplace safety laws and pioneered food safety regulations. She headed the New York State Department of Labor from 1929 to 1933 under Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Tapped for the Cabinet
When FDR became President, he asked Perkins to serve as his Secretary of Labor. She turned him down. As an outsider, she knew her appointment would be opposed because she was a woman and not a member of organized labor.
But FDR persisted. According to The Contrarian blog, the wily FDR wanted Perkins because she was an outsider. He believed picking someone from one labor union would anger the other unions and make it impossible to pass new laws.
To persuade Perkins, he promised to support her efforts to create what became Social Security. To many people, Social Security is her claim to fame. But she was also a driving force behind laws which banned child labor, set a minimum wage, and established the 40-hour work week.
She later told The Contrarian, “I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.”
Remembered in Maine
Perkins left government in 1945, but she continued to teach and work for the rights of working people until her own death on May 14, 1965. She gave a lecture at Cornell University shortly before she died, suffering a stroke just after the lecture.
She was buried in her family compound in Newcastle. In 2024 President Joe Biden declared the site a national monument.
Today, workers can retire with a monthly payment from Social Security, receive compensation if they are injured on the job, and receive a minimum wage for their labor thanks to the efforts of Frances Perkins.
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