Public Employee Press

Book Review
The woman behind FDR’s New Deal, Frances Perkins

As New York industrial commissioner, Frances Perkins spearheaded worker-friendly reforms in job safety, minimum wages and unemployment insurance. In 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved up from governor to president, he picked her to be his secretary of labor.

She took on the Great Depression in ways we could learn from in today’s economic crisis and faced the challenge of serving as the first woman cabinet secretary when women had just won the right to vote.

Washington Post reporter Kirstin Downey’s thoroughly researched and very readable biography, “The Woman Behind the New Deal,” tells us how much Perkins changed this country with accomplishments that form the backbone of today’s labor protections and explains how she overcame men’s prejudice against women’s leadership and power.

With unemployment at 25 percent, her number one job was creating jobs. She ran the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put millions to work, and pushed FDR to support the Works Progress Administration and other programs that directly employed more millions building bridges and tunnels public housing, schools and art projects.

Perkins was the architect of the Social Security, minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. Her support for workers’ right to organize helped spark a wave of unionization, and she convinced Roosevelt to resist pressures to call in the military to repress the sit-down strikes.

Today employers widely violate the minimum wage and hours laws, state unemployment insurance benefits have shrunk to a pittance, and despite massive unemployment, there is little talk of the kind of government-run jobs programs that helped so many in the Depression. Downey’s new look at Frances Perkins and the New Deal could help us rethink our current crisis.

For those who want a more introductory treatment there are also “Frances Perkins” by Emily Keller and an interesting DVD, “You May Call Her Madam Secretary,” which has the notable actor Frances Sternhagen as Perkins telling of her life in her own words. All are available in the DC 37 Education Fund Library, Room 211.

— Ken Nash