geeky
She was born Fannie Coralie Perkins on April 10, 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents, Frederick and Susan Perkins, were from Maine but moved to Massachusetts. At age 25, Fannie Coralie Perkins changed her name to Frances when she joined the Episcopal church in 1905. Perkins attended the Classical High School in Worcester and she graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry and physics in 1902. She obtained a master's degree in political science from Columbia University in 1910. She also taught chemistry from 1904 to 1906 at Ferry Hall School (now Lake Forest Academy). In 1918 she began her years of study in economics and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Perkins became the head of the New York Consumers League in 1910 and in that capacity she made a name for herself, lobbying for better working hours and conditions. She taught as a professor of sociology at Adelphi College and she witnessed the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a pivotal event that led to a change in labor conditions in the United States. She left the New York Consumers League and became the executive secretary for the Committee on Safety of the City of New York.
In 1913, Perkins married New York economist Paul Caldwell Wilson. She actually had to bring a court action to keep her maiden name. The couple had a daughter, Susanna. Both her husband and her and daughter suffered from manic-depressive symptoms and Wilson was hospitalized for mental illness. Perkins was the sole supporter for her household.
Perkins held various positions in New York State government and became a respected figure for her work for safer working conditions in the state of New York. In 1919 she was named to the Industrial Commission of the State of New York by Governor Alfred E. Smith.
In 1929 newly elected New York governor, Franklin Roosevelt, appointed Perkins as the inaugural Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor. She helped to put New York in the forefront of progressive reform in the field of labor. Her initiatives included expanded factory investigations, a reduced workweek for women (to 48 hours) and passage of minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. Her most passionate causes were working to end child labor and to provide safety for women in the workplace.
In 1933, Roosevelt appointed Perkins as Secretary of the Department of Labor, a position she held for twelve years. She held the position for longer than any other Secretary of Labor and she became the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States. (This meant that she was the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession). President Roosevelt consistently her efforts as Secretary of Labor. She wrote a significant amount of New Deal legislation, including minimum-wage laws. As chairwoman of the President's Committee on Economic Security, she was involved in the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. She drafted the Social Security Act of 1935. On the day that the bill was signed into law, her husband escaped from a mental institution.
Following her tenure as Secretary of Labor, in 1945 Perkins was asked by President Harry Truman to serve on the United States Civil Service Commission and she did until 1952, when her husband died. At that time she resigned from federal service. In 1946 she published a memoir of her time in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, entitled The Roosevelt I Knew.
Following her government service career, Perkins taught at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University until her death. She died on May 14, 1965 at the age of 85. She is buried in the Glidden Cemetery in Newcastle, Maine. In her honor, the headquarters of the United States Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. was named The Frances Perkins Building is the Washington, D.C. A recent biography of her was published in 2009 entitled The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience by Kirstin Downey.