Bible connection

Perkins’ motto: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” — 1 Cor 15:58 (ESV) 

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,
    but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. — Proverbs 14:31 (NIV)

All about Frances Perkins (1880-1965)

Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet member in U. S. history. She was born Fannie Coralie Perkins in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. at Mount Holyoke College in 1902. While a student there, Perkins heard a speaker vividly describe the nation’s growing urban and industrial problems. She found her calling.

David Brooks writes of former days in the U.S.A. and Frances Perkins :

Much of American moral education drew on an ethos expressed by the headmaster of the Stowe School, in England, who wrote in 1930 that the purpose of his institution was to turn out young men who were “acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck.” America’s National Institute for Moral Instruction was founded in 1911 and published a “Children’s Morality Code,” with 10 rules for right living. At the turn of the 20th century, Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s institution, was an example of an intentionally thick moral community. When a young Frances Perkins was a student there, her Latin teacher detected a certain laziness in her. She forced Perkins to spend hours conjugating Latin verbs, to cultivate self-discipline. Perkins grew to appreciate this: “For the first time I became conscious of character.” The school also called upon women to follow morally ambitious paths. “Do what nobody else wants to do; go where nobody else wants to go,” the school’s founder implored. Holyoke launched women into lives of service in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Perkins, who would become the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet (Franklin D. Roosevelt’s), was galvanized there.

When she was living in Lake Forest, Illinois, and working in Chicago, she was attracted to the Episcopal Church. Perkins was confirmed at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Lake Forest, on June 11, 1905. She remained a life-long Episcopalian.

While working at a Chicago settlement house, she determined to “do something about unnecessary hazards to life, unnecessary poverty” because “our Lord has directed all those who thought they were following in His path to visit the widows, the orphans, the fatherless, the prisoners and so forth.”

Perkins earned an M.A. at Columbia University in 1910. In 1911 she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York in which 146 factory workers died. She took up industrial safety work for the City of New York. Perkins continued her work in industrial relations, serving at the state level with Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt during their respective terms as Governor of New York.

In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her Secretary of Labor. Before accepting the job, she consulted with her friend, Suffragan Bishop Charles K. Gilbert of New York. Receiving spiritual direction was one of her disciplines. She was an associate of the All Saints’ Sisters of the Poor, and she spent one day a month in silent retreat at their Catonsville, Maryland convent throughout her twelve years in the cabinet

Frances Perkins had a clear vision of her priorities—what God wanted came first. As secretary of Labor under Frankin Roosevelt, she developed programs that bettered the lives of the American people. These included Social Security, workplace safety regulations, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, minimum wage laws, and the forty hour work week. Throughout a life spent championing the rights of working people, the poor, children, and the disadvantaged, Perkins used her Christian faith as her guide. When friends asked why it was important for the fortunate to help the poor she told them, “that it was what Jesus would want them to do.”  [See Michelle Kew at the Francis Perkins Center]

As Secretary of Labor, she was instrumental in helping draft and implement Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. Perkins resigned her post shortly after Roosevelt’s death in 1945.

In 1955 she joined the faculty of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She remained active in teaching and lecturing until her death in New York City.

Quotes

• I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.
• The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.
• The accusation that I am a woman is incontrovertible.
• It’s only when we’re relaxed that the thing way down deep in all of us – call it the subconscious mind, the spirit, what you will – has a chance to well up and tell us how we shall go.
• You can always get sympathy by using the word small. With little industries you feel as you do about a little puppy.