On July 3, 2009, the Frances Perkins Center was featured in “Maine Watch with Jennifer Rooks” on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN). The program included an interview with the executive director, Barbara Burt, who mentioned that Cynthia Otis, Frances Perkins’s grandmother, had been a major influence on Frances. She also shared the vision of the center with the show host Jennifer Rooks, which includes creating a digital archive of Frances’s documents and a conference center in her name.
Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, Frances’s grandson and a board member of the center, who was also featured in this program, talked about the fire safety practice he and his grandmother had at The Brick House.
At the MPBN studio, Rooks was joined by Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal and Dr. Christopher Breiseth, the immediate past president and CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Downey discussed Frances’s role in the New Deal and the Fire Safety Code. Dr. Breiseth, who knew Frances personally as a student at Cornell University, spoke about her personality. He mentioned that when he had asked Ms Perkins about her most important accomplishment, she had replied, “Social Security.”
Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal, recently wrote an editorial in the AFL-CIO Now blog, “Frances Perkins Rides to the Rescue–Again.” Here’s an excerpt:
Americans’ fears about the economy worsened when the Department of Labor reported that unemployment had skyrocketed to 8.5 percent in March, the highest rate in 25 years.
These are not just statistics. The numbers represent real people. At 10 a.m. on a recent morning, more than 150 men stood alongside a main highway into Washington, D.C., in the Virginia city of Annandale, clustered in small groups, huddled against the wind, peering into the windows of passing cars, hoping for work. Motorists sped by quickly, looking away to avoid attracting attention and raising false hopes. Unemployed laborers are a frightening sight to those who are still working.
It is in alarming times like these that some of the key programs of the New Deal demonstrate their continuing significance and highlight how much Americans continue to rely on solutions fashioned then in response to lessons learned, in times that seem eerily similar to our own.
In this case, the economic shock absorber system is unemployment insurance. It is the FEMA of economic hurricanes, and it is keeping more than 6 million households afloat during these bad times.
The unemployment insurance system was propelled into existence by Frances Perkins, the canny but little-known social worker who was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor. She had studied the U.S. economy for 20 years before she took up her Cabinet post, and she was Roosevelt’s industrial commissioner from 1928 to 1932 while he was governor of New York. Together, they watched the Great Depression arrive and cast its shadow across the American landscape.
Frances Perkins is most famous today for her role as primary architect of Social Security. But in 1933 and 1934, the program she championed most fiercely was unemployment insurance. Now it has become a first line of defense against capitalism’s ruthless pattern of boom-and-bust cycles.
Political reporter Dieter Bradbury and photographer Jack Milton visited The Brick House last week. This article, New Deal leader celebrated in Maine, and accompanying slideshow are the result. The combination makes a wonderful introduction to the Center and its mission.
This is a tape of Kirstin Downey’s presentation at the Library of Congress several weeks ago. As they say on network television, this is “must-see TV”!
I traveled to South Hadley, Massachusetts, earlier this week to participate in a lecture about Frances Perkins at her alma mater, Mt. Holyoke College. The lecture was sponsored by the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts as part of the Body Politic(s) series.
Frances Perkins was the president of her senior class, graduating in 1902. She later served as a trustee, and visited the campus many times, including attending her 60th reunion.
At a lovely dinner the college held before the lecture, Marjorie Kaufman, who was Mt. Holyoke during the latter occasion, recalled seeing Frances stalk back and forth in front of her seated 80-something classmates, exhorting them to stand up, stand up!
Mt. Holyoke College has a program for non-traditional students called the Frances Perkins Program, under the capable leadership of Kay Altoff and Carolyn Dietel. (The Frances Perkins Program also co-sponsored the lecture.) A number of Frances Perkins Scholars, as they are known, attended the dinner. I think Frances would have enjoyed meeting them — a spirited group with a passion for learning. One of the Frances Perkins Scholars said to me that, while reading The Woman Behind the New Deal, she kept thinking how perfect an embodiment of the Mt. Holyoke ideal Frances Perkins was — dedicated to making the world a better place without tooting her own horn, collaborating, bringing people together for a common cause, searching out the best in others and inspiring them to higher accomplishments.
The lecture was introduced by Professor Lois Brown, director of the Weissman Center, and it mainly consisted of a compelling presentation by Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal. I joined Kirstin at the front during the question and answer session.
You can hear the lecture here (click on the links below):
Many thanks to Mt. Holyoke College and the students, faculty, and adminstrators who made our visit both so comfortable and so stimulating.
Amy Goodman and her production staff did a fabulous job in an interview of Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal, on March 31. Be sure to watch; there are some great photos and clips of Frances Perkins interspersed throughout the interview.
I’m in Washington this week and looking forward to a presentation this noon at the AFL-CIO with Perkins biographer Kirstin Downey and AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney.
Kirstin Downey speaking at the AFL-CIO.
The event commemorates the 98th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which Perkins witnessed. The horror of it galvanized her, leading to her lifelong passion for safe workplace conditions.
Another great treat this noon will be the songs of Annie Schneiderman Valliere, the great niece of Rose Schneiderman, who helped to found the International Ladies Garment Workers Union after the fire and led the union’s 1913 strike.
I also have a short audio clip that I’ll post as soon as I figure out how to do it!
UPDATE: For a great description of the event, visit the AFL-CIO Now blog.
Annie Valliere singing great union organizing songs at the AFL-CIO event.
“The people are what matter to government, and
a government should aim to give all the people
under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”
--Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, 1933 - 1945
