“Strand by strand, Frances Perkins (1880-1965) helped weave a safety net that protects all Americans to this day.” This is the sentence author Kathleen Krull uses to summarize the career of the remarkable woman who was Secretary of Labor during Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms as President of the United States. Being the first woman to hold a cabinet position was remarkable in and of itself, but Perkins’s enduring accomplishments – both before and after she served as Secretary of Labor – are what distinguish her in our nation’s history. She is not, perhaps, well-known; she chose to work quietly and ceaselessly over her lifetime. Though a shy child, she took to heart her grandmother’s encouraging words: to walk through any doors of opportunity that opened to her. She gained her voice as a student debater; by watching and listening in the communities around her, she became very aware of the challenges hungry immigrants suffered and, in college, the untenable conditions endured by textile and paper mill workers, among them young children. Understanding that having an effective voice was an aspect of the power to change things, Frances joined the fight for women’s right to vote, pursued an education in the emerging field of social work, and embarked on relentless documentation of unsafe work conditions in New York City. Spurred to activism when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 took the lives of 146 immigrants who could not escape the factory, she accepted the job of overseeing workplace regulations for New York state. When the nation faced the devastating stock market collapse of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression, Frances was the exact right person for President Roosevelt to select as Secretary of Labor as he unveiled his plans for a New Deal. Frances made a list of all her pertinent ideas for the President: “The scope of her list was breathtaking. It was nothing less than a restructuring of American society.” Perkins was usually “the only woman in the photo” when government programs were launched, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps putting millions of young people to work caring for natural resources. The Social Security Act of 1935 is perhaps her biggest legacy, though few of us know she was at the very heart of its design. Perkins understood the issues and the power of the national government to address them. The picture book biography The Only Woman in the Photo: Frances Perkins & and Her New Deal for America is packed with wonderful narrative details that express Perkins’ motivations and accomplishments; illustrations by Alexandra Bye convey, very appealingly and energetically, the life and times of an exceptional woman. Ages 6-10. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2020.
Readers can learn more by visiting the website of the Frances Perkins Center in Damariscotta, Maine: https://francesperkinscenter.org
