Frances Perkins Quotes

Workers-rights advocate and United States Secretary of Labor 1933–1945

Frances Perkins (April 10, 1882 – May 14, 1965) was U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945. She was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet and was largely responsible for the U.S. adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, the federal minimum wage, and federal laws regulating child labor.
During her term as Secretary of Labor, Perkins executed the , the and its successor the , plus the labor portion of the . With the Social Security Act she established , pensions for the many uncovered elderly Americans and welfare for the poorest Americans. She pushed to reduce workplace accidents and helped craft laws against child labor. Through the , she established the first minimum wage and laws for American workers and defined the standard forty-hour work week. She formed governmental policy for working with labor unions and helped to alleviate strikes by way of the United States Conciliation Service. Perkins dealt with many labor questions during World War II when skilled labor was vital and women were moving into formerly male jobs. She is the subject of the documentary film "Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare" (2020).

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Fannie Coralie Perkins

Alternative Names: Frances Coralie Perkins • Frances Perkins Wilson

From Wikidata (CC0)

His arrogance isn't what disturbs me so much as his self-centeredness... He doesn't seem to care about anything that doesn't concern him personally.

You showed me which, of all the 'hats' a social worker wears, suits me best. ...[i.e.,] You convinced me that man-made evils can be corrected if people can be made to care enough. I intend to make them, if it's in my power.

Upon hearing that Franklin D. Roosevelt won his NY state senate seat because many thought they were voting for Theodore Roosevelt.

Well... he'll only win that way once, I imagine. He doesn't look as if he'd be very popular with people. What I mean is, he doesn't look as if he really likes people.

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

I shall always be most grateful to him. He made me rediscover that I had a mind. It had lain fallow, I am afraid, since my Mount Holyoke days.

I never really saw really poor people before... My parents always told me nobody had to be poor—that they wouldn't be if they weren't shiftless or didn't spend everything they earned on drink. I don't understand how Mama and Papa could be so mistaken! ...Yes, I guess I do. 'There are none so blind as those who will not see'—and that's a favorite quotation of Papa's too!

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

Women lobbyists, whatever their size, are looked at askance... Men seem to have trouble believing we have brains enough to understand the causes we're championing. ...Maybe I should have said most men.

[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.

So that beginning with that report coming in as it did in 1915, it was laid on the table before the legislature, and by this time, was the speaker of the House and well on the way to be governor. We had a very favorable audience and much of the legislation was enacted into law, oh, within a couple of years...

Although their commission was to devise ways and means to prevent accidents by fire in the State of New York, we... kept expanding the function of the commission 'till it came to be the report on [un]sanitary conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions... all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees, including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these subjects. I may say we did.

So we proceeded and it proved to be a most educative experience. This factory investigating commission was continued... for four years and its report, is... seven volumes. ...and it's in great detail ...the recommendations, the testimony. We went all over the state. I was a young person then and certainly not fit for service on any super commission but I was the chief—I was the investigator, and in charge of the investigations and this was an extraordinary opportunity... to get into factories to make a report and be sure it was going to be heard.

I remember... we heard the engines and we heard the screams and rushed out and rushed over... We could see this building from Washington Square and the people had just begun to jump when we got there. They had been holding... standing in the windowsills... crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this... net to catch people... they couldn't wait any longer. They began to jump. The window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. The net broke, they [fell] a terrible distance, the weight of the bodies was so great... that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped... It was a horrifying spectacle. We... felt as though we had been part of it all. The next day people... in all parts of the city... began to mull around and gather and talk.

This made a terrible impression on the people of the State of New York. I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere. It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn't have been. We were sorry. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! We didn't want it that way. We hadn't intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a factory. It was a terrible thing for the people... to face.