I will explain to you how that happens. And much of the research was done at library of congress, which is sponsoring todays event. It is a wonderful institution. A beautiful building, they are such Important Research materials there, and it is all available free. Public Access Library are really one of the things that make our nation great. [applause] and i am very grateful to the library of congress for being here and for continuing to give us such wonderful material. Now, this is a self selecting crowd. I know some of you already know who Frances Perkins is, but a lot of people dont. So lets start by asking this question. How many of you know who Frances Perkins is . All, yes. This is great. Good, good. How many of you know someone on Social Security . Please raise your hand. How many of you know someone who is receiving Unemployment Insurance or who has ever received Unemployment Compensation . Okay, Frances Perkins worked there, and we know so who is working a 40 hour week, generally more or less . Frances perkins works. How many of you know a 12 year old who has quit going to school so that she can work fulltime in a factory . Frances perkins works. Her ban on child labor and enacted in a fair labor standards act made it possible to keep kids in School Longer in stead of in mills and factories. Let me start by telling you a little bit. It is often here, but let me tell you a little bit. I want to read a little bit of the prologue from a book so that you know a little bit more about the breadth of Frances Perkins. On a chilly february night in 1933, a middle aged woman waited expectedly to meet with her employer at his residence on east 65th street in new york city. She clutched a scrap of paper with hastily written notes. Finally, i should into his daddy, the woman brushed aside her nervousness and spoke confidently. They bantered casually for a while as was their style and she turned serious. Her dark luminous eyes holding his gaze. He wanted her to take an assignment, but she decided she wouldnt accept it unless he allowed her to do it her own way. She held up the piece of paper in her hand, and he motioned her to continue. She kicked off the items that a 40 hour workweek, a minimum wage, workers compensation, Unemployment Compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized Public Employment service, and Health Insurance. She watched his eyes to make sure he was paying attention and understood the implications that each demanded. She braced for his response, knowing that he often chose political expediency over idealism, and was capable of callousness. Even cruelty. The scope of her list was breathtaking. She was proposing a fundamental and radical restructuring of American Society with enactment of historical social welfare and labor laws, to succeed she would have to overcome opposition from courts, business, labor unions, conservatives. Nothing like this has ever been done before in the United States, she said. You know that, dont you . The man sat across from her in his wheelchair amid a clutter of boxes and rumpled rugs here so he would have to washington, d. C. , to be sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States. He would inherit the worst economic crisis in the nations history. An era of rampant speculation had come to an end to the stock market had collapsed, rendering investments valueless. Banks were shutting down, cheating people of their lifetime savings. About a third of workers were unemployed, wages were falling, hundreds of thousands were homeless. Real estate prices have plummeted. And millions of homeowners faced foreclosure. His choice of labor secretary would be one of his most important early decisions. His nominee must understand economic employment issues, but be equally effective as a coalition leader. He was a handsome man with aqua like features antistate the woman before him. No one was more qualified for the job. She knew as much about labor law as anyone in the country. He had known her for more than 20 years. The last four in albany, where she had worked by his side. He trusted her, and he knew she would never betray him. None of the items i just mentioned were part of the fdrs Campaign Platform in 1932. Nevertheless, he told Frances Perkins he would back her. And she agreed to accept the job. That night in bed, she actually cried, cried in deep wailing sobs because she knew it would be such a difficult job. She would open herself to Constant Media scrutiny, harsh judgment and public criticism. Yet she knew she must accept the offer, as her grandmother had told her whenever a door opens to you, you had no choice but to walk through it. Frances perkins would become the nations first female secretary of labor. Now we know what happened after that. The Social Security act passed in 1935 gave us Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and our welfare system known as aid, aid to dependent children designed to help the children of parents of mothers left to raise her children alone. The fair labor standards act passed in 0. 1938 at 40 hour workweek and minimumwage. It put the ban on child labor. Other things she did, as they change insurance. She was the primary booster of the civilian conservation corps. She was the largest single supporter of the wpa. Truly, this was a really remarkable woman. Now, its a little interesting and unusual that i came to write this book, i came from a staunchly republican family and from a family of roosevelt haters. But when i came to washington, d. C. , in 1988, as a young business reporter, one of the first things i did as i sat at to learn my way around the town was to sign up for a trolley bus tour of the city. One of the first things i noticed was the Frances Perkins department of labor. Those of you who live in washington know, there is very few buildings in washington named after women. And so i noticed it, and i filed it away and wondered, who was Frances Perkins. I had never even heard of her. As we went around on this trolley bus on this day, i took the tour we got around over by the washington monument, and a tour bus driver said, you know, along with his regular pattern, one what American Woman had the worst childbirth experience. There was a long cause. Frances perkins. She spent 12 years in labor. [laughter] thats the first time i ever remember hearing that spoken aloud. Now i laugh, like the rest of you did, but it also was a feminist kind of comment, it irritated me and ever after that i kept Frances Perkins name in my mind and i kept listening for her. I spent 20 years at the Washington Post. And over the years i realized how often i heard her name. Often like sort of a distant whisper. When we talked about Social Security, Frances Perkins frequently talked about age discrimination, Frances Perkins. When we talked about the fair labor standards act in making revisions to it, we talked about Frances Perkins. When we talked about the Labor Movement, we are talking about Frances Perkins. This was all her handiwork. Quite an extraordinary decorative achievement. I spent 20 years at the Washington Post that i went all over the country for the Washington Post, with a wonderful life, education going to visit places and learn new things. And as i traveled around the country writing business stories, i begin to realize how little i knew about the history of the working people of america. Its something that really isnt taught. In the late 1990s, i wrote a series of articles on sexual harassment. And i heard a lot of chilling stories about places where there been an imbalance of power, where people were able to use their power to force people to do things they didnt want to do. There were people who were sort of trapped in a cycle of abuse, and a lot of times the stories were really very bad stories. Really much more akin to criminal activity than most of us have realized. And i heard all of these stories all around the country, and i began to suffer myself with psychologist called secondary stress. And i got afraid to fly. I started to feel like Authority Figures could be counted on to do the right thing. If there were a problem. I suppose part of the issue for me was that i had both the good luck and the bad luck to sit by the post fabulous aviation reporter, don phillips. And he was writing about every plane crash that happened in america. So every day, and i was afraid to fly, i was overhearing him talk about every air accident that happened and just how the people on board had died. So i started to travel places by trained. Whenever i could get away with it. I took a long trip out west to do a story on the national parks. And on the way i read tony lucasbook, big trouble, which is really a fabulous book about the great labor battles of 100 years ago. I was shocked to realize that actually these were battles. Almost like warfare out on the western frontier between employers and workers. And i realized how little i knew about that. So i began looking for vehicles to write about the epic struggle of the working man in america to get a better life. I came back to the post and i started to write a column called on the job, where people could write these letters about their problems at work. And one day a man wrote me and said, at the end of the day every day, we are locked into our offices while they count the money in the cash register. Do you think that is unsafe . Yes, it is. Even a rat has an escape hole he told me. So i decided to write a column on workplace fire safety. And in doing it, i get a little bit of research on the triangle fire. And i heard that a young social worker named Frances Perkins had actually witnessed the triangle shirt waist fire. And what she had seen had so horrified or 146 people died that day, many leaping to their death from a building in lower manhattan. It was a sweatshop. From that experience, Frances Perkins was so motivated to make changes that she drafted the laws that became our National Fire safety act. You might say, eureka. At that point, i felt this is a woman who has a fabulous story. It has to be told. This aspect of labor history is something that is not told very much at all in america, and by telling the story of Frances Perkins live on site opportunity to do it. Today, in various income youll hear a lot about political history, military history, civil rights history, but except for me today you hear very little about labor history and my book s. Try to rectify that. I got a contract to write the book. I began doing the research when i got a fellowship at harvard university. I was a nieman fellow at harvard. At harvard at the time there was not a single professor of labor history. At this point now, there is only one major newspaper that employs a fulltime labor reporter. Thats the new york times, and it is steven greenhouse. And he has a lonely job. Now, many people advocate heartily for free trade today, but there arent a lot of people speaking up for the defense of the working people in america. And in fact, that is what Frances Perkins devoted her life to doing. Is to talking about the problems of working people and try to find ways to solve those problems, ways that could also keep americans businesses strong and prosperous. Now, if Frances Perkins were standing here today i can almost assuredly tell you what you think she would be talking about . She would be talking about jobs today. Should be talking about how to generate jobs and how to bring good paying jobs back to america. She would be talking about smart employers who are finding ways to grow their workforces, economic policies that would bring good paying jobs back to america. She would be talking about ways to strengthen the Labor Movement today so that workers can protect their pension. Their rights to a 40 hour workweek. And the right to Health Insurance that actually work when it is supposed to. The Labor Movement, there is a backbone of america and there is much of the source of our countrys economic prosperity. But nobody talks about them very much at all, almost nobody at all. And that is alarming, especially when we face an economic crisis as we do today. This is a matter of particular interest to me because i spent a lifetime studying the American Economy and the Unemployment Rate which is really becoming a very serious problem for the United States. We need to get people employed with jobs that earn enough money to give them financial security, and allow them to buy the things they need, food and housing and health care. I think if Frances Perkins were here today, and i think i have the right to say, i spent nine years studying her life, i think she would say we need to pay a lot more attention again to the working man. And im open for questions. [applause] i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how Frances Perkins, in an era when there were essentially no other women in high political positions, was able to navigate with the other political players in washington. Thats right. Did everyone hear the question . Okay. Its a really good question and i think that is part of what fascinated me. She essentially had to invent the role of a woman in high public office. She had to figure out how she was going to dress, how she would talk, even what she was going to call herself. Now, in some ways this cost her some embarrassment because early on when she started, someone said that she should be called madam secretary. Now, she sort of went along with this but she didnt realize that after that she would begin to be called the madam. Which made her very embarrassed that she was quite the victorian, and she never liked that. But she did finders out in the position of inventing everything about herself. She tried to be very careful how she spoke. She tried to speak as men do. She tried to keep her sentences short and to the point. And she tried to make sure that the men never felt like she was stealing the limelight from them. This was very important that she always let fvr shined, and that was part of the secret of her success. But in fact, every single day of her life she had to think about those gender issues and how exactly things are going to play out. It was very difficult. In fact, she did find washington to be just as frightening of a place as she feared. Could you expand a little more on the relationship between Frances Perkins and fdr . Frances perkins was i believe fdrs closest friend. Now, its funny because a lot of other men played poker with him, hung out with him, helped him. , harry hopkins, henry morgenthau. These men were all devoted friends. But across the years, Frances Perkins first met fdr in 1910 when she became his secretary of labor. She had already known him 22 years. And he kept her by his side for the entire length of his presidency, the 12 years in labor that i had mentioned earlier. The whole time of his presidency. In fact, she tried to resign repeatedly. She really hated life in washington, found it very difficult. But he could never let her go. And in fact, when she tried to resign in 1944, she was exhausted. She wanted to go home to new york. He actually reached his arms up to her, put his arms around her and said, please dont go. Francis, how can you be so selfish . And she stayed. Were there any initiatives, progressive initiatives that fdr pushed back on, or didnt fully implement . Right. Thats a really good question, and in fact the debate is raging right now in washington as we speak. Frances perkins had presented fdr with a list of about 10 items that i mentioned at the beginning when i was reading the prologue. I know it is kind of difficult to hear me. She had presented him a list of about 10 items. The only ones she didnt accomplish was national Health Insurance. In fact, the American Medical Association told roosevelt and Frances Perkins that they would kill Social Security to prevent what they called socialized medicine from taking root in america. What we ended up with was a Health Insurance system that happened that grew accidentally. It was a reaction to the wage and price controls during world war ii. Companies were not allowed to raise wages, but they really wanted to attract workers. They begin to offer Health Insurance. So we ended up with a Health Insurance system that was targeted to the strong and healthy, not to the sick and jobless. The program Frances Perkins wanted would have looked more like medicaid looks today. A program that would be targeted to people who dont have money to pay for health care. She was never able to get that accomplished. Fdr abandoned national Health Insurance to get Social Security enacted. Every two or three years, she would bring it up again and say is it time now to get national Health Insurance. And each time someone would tell her no, no. Too much of a hot potato. We are not going to touch that one of. And her very last communications with fdr were please dont Forget National Health Insurance. [applause] thank you so much for your work on her. I am deeply grateful to you for having done that. As a feminist, it is a minor suggestion that i am sensitive to the working men and would invite you to say working men and women. But with that aside i wonder if you could talk a bit about what is her childhood might have foretold. This sympathy to the working people and to those who are kind of left out. Right. Frances perkins was a very devout christian. She was an episcopalian. And she had enormously deep empathy for the human condition. She was interested in the plight of immigrants. She was interested in the plight of workers. She often said that she felt peoples pain. She became fascinated in the American Economy. She studied business. She was very interested in businessmen and how they, businessmen and women, at that time businessmen. And how they conducted their business. But she was fascinated to see the role that workers played in making those businesses prosperous. She wanted to see a better balance of power between employers and workers. And that became her lifetime crusade. She had an enormous number of interests over the years that she was a very big suffrage activist, and so she was very strong advocate for womens rights. She was a Birth Control supporter also. But she chose the one particular issue, which was worker rights. She made that her lifetime cause, and that seemed to gelled tour after seeing the triangle shirtwaist fire. Relations with organized labor, the unions and that. Yes, fascinating relationship between Frances Perkins and organized labor. They were mad as hell when she was made secretary of labor. Most unions at the time didnt permit women to be members at all. And a lot of the men who were the heads of the labor unions had hoped to be labor secretary themselves. So they were personally resentful. And they were also present will at a social worker was the one who would believe the department of labor. Overtime though they saw that she was their most all in supporter, and the things that she did enable the Labor Movement to grow dramatically in the next 20 years. Now we know that fdr and Frances Perkins and pulled the United States out of the great depression. The capitalist system eventually recovered after the big employment push of world war ii. But the Labor Movement was the huge beneficiary of this growth. With labor laws, protective labor laws in place. We had an Enormous Growth of the middle class in america. And the country became the prosperous place that was in the50s and60s. And that has been the base of our countries great global wealth. Good morning. You mention she was a strong supporter of the wpa. And im wondering if she had friendships with louis hine and Dorothy Lange . Francis perkins was less involved and the public works projects what she did is lobby for the funding that allowed those programs to happen. She was the reason that any of those things actually happened. In fact, she has a wonderful story. When she went to the white house and embattled fdr to keep those programs in place, the money for all of the various programs, and in fact, david taylor will be speaking after me. Hell be talking about the Office Program that was part of the new deal at that time. And Frances Perkins was the biggest single advocate of that. Hi. My name is isaac. I have a question, what was the top programs as she put forward . What was her top priority . Her top priority. It was her Social Security and that was her single biggest source of pride in her entire life. She felt it was a program that would last for ever. In fact, there are 50 Million People on Social Security today. Could you comment on her relationship to Eleanor Roosevelt . Frances perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt had a very interesting topic and relationship. They both shared the affection of franklin roosevelt. In different ways. Elenor was enormously valuable Frances Perkins was the one who came up with the ideas and enacted the legislation. Franklin roosevelt was the one who had the Political Savvy and popular to make things happen. And eleanor was the one who could popularize these ideas. The two women were friends. They loved each other as allies of a lifetime due. And they were also fears rivals and often jealous of each other. At the end of their lives though, theres a wonderful picture of the two women at the 50th anniversary of the triangle shirt waist fires and their heads are big and close together and you can see what sincere friendship and affection they have for each other. Despite whatever little chance they may have had over the years. Thank you very much for writing the book i enjoyed it very much and i agree with you that it is an issue that needs to be brought forward. Do you think that the book brings any new research or addition to the historiography of that period . I would say the things that i learned in my research that probably, were probably news to most people, is really what a huge role Frances Perkins played in all aspects of the new deal. She had sort of gotten a raise out of new deal history. Youll now see new books include some that are taught in colleges that mention her three or four times. Five times. That is exported. I also found out that Teddy Roosevelt was the person to first pick her to head the committee on safety. After the triangle shirtwaist fire so that meant that her shirt and First Contact with Teddy Roosevelt, not franklin roosevelt, and i thought that was a really cool find. At the library of congress. [applause] thank you very much
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