Frances Perkins Quotes

One of the girls who was among my best friends came from a poverty-stricken home. Her family was delightful and I used to wonder how such things could happen...

The mothers don't want to bring their children [in for child labor at a vegetable cannery in Auborn, NY]—they need to. ...That need will never cease until employers pay decent wages! There ought to be a law assuring minimum pay, as well as one limiting hours worked!

[I]t afterwards, seems in some way to have paid the debt society owed to those children, those young people who lost their lives in the Triangle Fire. It's their contribution to the people of New York that we have this really magnificent series of legislative acts to protect and improve the administration of the law regarding the protection of work people in the City of - in the State of New York.

Who is that tall, thin young man with the pince-nez, who seems constantly to be looking down his nose at people?

<nowiki>[</nowiki>'s speech] first opened my mind to the necessity for and the possibility of the work which became my vocation.

From this day forward, I will be a Doer of the Word and not as Hearer only, whenever and wherever I see the need.

The Employment Service is all but dead. It needs resurrecting and reorganizing. The Statistical Bureau needs revamping too, so it will be an honest fact-finding body. As for the Immigration Service—well, really, Franklin, it is altogether too reactionary for today's world.

To know him is to love him... He's honest, high-minded, intelligent and—above all—independent. I have worked with him in government for years. There has never been any conflict between his official duties and his religious beliefs, I am confident there never will be!

I will fight for it up to the Supreme Court, if necessary... If the Industrial Commission does not have the right to make essential safety laws, it might as well close up shop!

[T]his was a terrible accident; 147 young people, they were all young men and women, were killed, lost their lives and a number of others were badly injured. Some of them were injured after the fire in the elevator shaft had gone out. Of course the boys that ran the elevator had gone... fled. Some of the people tried to get out by jumping into the elevator shaft and grabbing the cables and letting themselves down... Some of them fell, some of them were awkward and... couldn't hold on. Some of them merely blistered their hands, took the skin and flesh off their hands coming down on the cables and there were a number of people sadly injured.

I think any compulsion other than moral compulsion is wrong. Let disputes be settled by public opinion, not statute.

Gentlemen... let me make a plain statement. As I see it, the Labor Commission is duty-bound always to consider two things about every recommendation. One: what will this provide in the way of health, comfort, decency and security? Two: what will it cost?

His illness had changed him... Having known what trouble is to the very depths of his being, he can now sympathize with other people who have problems. I think he could make a very good governor of the state of New York.

I am extraordinarily the product of my grandmother... Scarcely a week goes by that I don't find myself saying, "As my grandmother used to say," and then repeating something that apparently has been a guiding principle all my life.

The process of recovery is not a simple one. ... We cannot be satisfied merely with makeshift arrangements which will tide us over the present emergencies. We must devise plans that will not merely alleviate the ills of today, but will prevent, as far as it is humanly possible to do so, their recurrence in the future.