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Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant

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Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1014.845

And 62 of those people jumped to their death in front of full view of New York City, including Frances Perkins.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

103.214

I don't know. But I tell you what, if you want to take a vote on maybe one of the most undersung while at the same time being most influential Americans to ever live, Neil Diamond. Oh, he was very sung.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1084.554

Yeah, I mean, she was already kind of headed down this road anyway. She was already part of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission. And because of this fire, which she – I don't think we said she was just having tea across the park there, ran over and saw this.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1101.544

One of the things she saw at one point, there were 20 people that had managed to get out a window onto a fire escape, one of those tiny little flimsy New York fire escapes. And all 20 of those people, the thing collapsed and they all fell to their 100 feet to their death right in front of her face.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1126.929

Yeah, absolutely. But this was sort of just the way it was. I mean, not absolving them, but she saw this as part of the bigger problem. Not like these two owners are responsible, but she was like it was an indictment of the system.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1150.319

No, but what was average was the fact that they didn't have fire codes. And she's the person that brought that in. By the time she was in her early 30s, she had called for and successfully called for exit signs, occupancy limits, sprinklers, fire escapes, unlocked doors and stairwells, how wide the doorways had to be depending on your factory floor, like all these sort of common sense things.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1175.639

Like a lot of people saw this stuff happen. and saw this incident that day and were horrified. But Frances Perkins said, nope, I'm going to change it. I'm a woman in 1911 and I'm in my early 30s, but I'm going to make this happen. And she did.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

122.27

You would be hard-pressed to overlook Ms. Perkins.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

128.311

Ms. Frances Perkins.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1292.986

Yeah, and she ingratiated herself to these male politicians a couple of different important times in her life. And the first one was Alfred E. Smith, like you were saying. So she rose along with him because he knew. He was like, man, I don't care if she's a woman or not. She works harder than anyone I know. And she gets the job done. So I'm just going to bring her along with me.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1326.968

Well, yeah. I mean, I talked about her very large brain. And her higher education, she was super, super smart. Like I said, she majored in chemistry and physics, even though her real love was econ. So it's like, are you kidding me?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1342.049

No, it's very much true.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

142.154

Yeah, and if you are... One of those people who was unfortunate to not be able to work right now during quarantine and the effects of COVID-19. And you are not lucky enough, but, you know, deservedly enough receiving unemployment insurance. You can thank Francis Perkins for that.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1430.12

Yeah. So when he came into his governorship, she had already been named and was the chairperson, called it a chairman back then, in 1926 of the State Industrial Board. She was doing a great job there. And then in 1929, FDR appointed her as the industrial commissioner of the state of New York. And what happens? The stock market crashes. The Great Depression hits America like a punch in the face.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1458.794

And she was the one who stepped in and got in his ear and said, you know what? Like, I know that we have to feed people right now. We have really immediate needs. But like you mentioned earlier in the episode, she thought about the big picture and long-term goals. She said, we need to really take swift action here. So with her help, they created a Committee on Employment.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1481.71

He appointed her the head of that. And then when he was elected president in 1933, he said, you know what? I'm going to appoint you to be my secretary of labor. That was huge. I've been working with you for 20 years. I trust you, and you're going to do a great job. And the public roundly said, what? A woman in the cabinet?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1514.289

Dude, she couldn't vote until she was 40.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1522.915

But wasn't allowed to vote for her boss, essentially.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1573.634

Oh, yeah, that scared them to death.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1612.642

Yeah, and pre the union stuff, like kind of right after the Great Depression hit, one of the first things they did together was created the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, which was a really big success, one of the big early successes of the New Deal in that they said, you know what? We have all this – we have this workforce of these unskilled, unmarried men.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1636.108

And let's get these guys working in conservation. We have this vast areas of rural land and natural resources. And let's send these guys out there to work on this stuff. And they did. And it provided a ton of jobs to the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1676.53

Oh, I think you mean the Wagner Act. Yes.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1763.747

That's amazing. I feel like we had to have talked about her in our unions episode, and if we didn't— Shame on us, but also shame on the fact that she probably didn't pop up in our research, which is one of the problems.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1779.78

All right, so I'm going to pass that buck.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1783.984

The buck stops over there. Well, we're making up for it now either way.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1856.046

Yeah, and boy, we should do one on Social Security at some point.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1867.705

Go ahead. I'm looking at it. Well, no, I'm going to have our little assistant over here check that. Can you go and check on that? Okay. They're on it.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1877.89

Like we've ever had anyone that worked for us. That's the funny thing is when we get emails over the years, they're like, well, to Josh and Chuck and Jerry or whoever on your staff is reading this. It's like, yeah, it's pretty much us.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1897.284

Well, I want to be fair. To be fair, we work for a big podcasting network, and there are a lot of people that help us get stuff out in the world, but we have never had, like, a Stuff You Should Know staff of eight people who only work for us and research for us and all that stuff.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

1914.033

I feel like—I'm glad you said that because it felt like I was patting ourselves on the back for a second there. No, the opposite. You dashed that very fast. Sure.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2030.279

So Social Security, what we're talking about in general, everyone knows what this is, is basically a system where younger, hardy people working hard in this country help out older people, retired people, perhaps disabled people, people that have had work-related accidents. People who wear funny hats. People who wear funny hats. Yeah.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2055.118

And pay into this system that ideally – and we're not going to get into the weeds here. That would come on our social security podcast. But ideally then when you are old or in need, then you have that same money waiting for you because of the younger generation and the younger workforce.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2111.304

Yeah. And it's not like, I mean, he didn't run for office with Social Security on his list of things to do.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2155.343

Yeah, and it's not like I was saying at all that FDR was like not a champion of it or was just lazy. He had a bunch of stuff going on, and he had a bunch of irons in the fire. So he needed her to come in and say, hey, listen, this is all great because we're in a – tragic situation right now, like we're trying to put out a fire.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2175.546

But what I want to do is make sure another fire doesn't happen in the future.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

222.875

Yeah, it would be dark ages stuff in this country.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2223.737

Yeah, and she also, you know, we talked about some of the things she did earlier in terms of her career, in terms of fair labor practices. But when she was secretary of labor, she had real teeth to make real change. And during her tenure, she helped craft the Fair Labor Standards Act. She helped establish minimum wage laws, maximum work hours laws. And she finally said, you know what?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2248.4

Maybe we shouldn't make labor for children better. Maybe we should not bring our children to work and make them work. So let's just get rid of child labor altogether.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

234.119

Yeah, and we want to thank HowStuffWorks. That's where part of this research came from and some other places. But notably, and I want to shout this out because this is a library intern at the FDR Library who wrote a paper called Honoring the Achievements of FDR Secretary of Labor, Jessica Brightman.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2362.347

Is that our cherry on top at the end?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2370.637

Oh, man. And not the drunk guy. I hate that guy. Okay. So when FDR passed away in 1945, she was the longest serving labor secretary and one of only two cabinet members to serve the entire length of his super, super long presidency. And she held over into Truman as well. He was like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So you're welcome to stay, which you don't see a lot of that anymore. Yeah.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2399.335

She published a biography, a bestseller about FDR called The Roosevelt I Knew. And here are a few other just sort of career feathers in her cap. She was the head of the American delegation to the International Labor Organization in Paris. Truman appointed her to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which was a position she held until 1953 –

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2424.077

And she basically accomplished every single one of her goals while she was Secretary of Labor except for one thing she went in there wanting to do, which was universal access to health care.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2451.496

That's right. And then after that, she did what a lot of people in public policy do. She went on to teach and lecture at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. She did that until she was 85 years old when she passed away in 1965.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2484.128

Can you imagine? Yeah.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

252.844

This is really good stuff, and she's a library intern, and we want to shout her out. Yeah, she did great. Or she was at the time. I imagine she's moved on from that internship.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2574.468

Well, and, you know, we mentioned why she's undersung there. You know, history is written by men. We all know this. And a lot of those New Deal histories in the 70s and 80s didn't even mention her, which is just staggering that you can write a history of the New Deal and not mention Francis Perkins. It's just like a black eye on any author that did something like that.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2604.959

So the cherry on top here at the end is World War II. World War II was not a cherry on top. But she was watching Hitler do his thing in Germany and got really worried. She's like, man, that guy's cranked up. She read about anti-Semitism and everything that was going on with the violence there, and she wanted to help German refugees escape.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2628.986

And at the time, the Coolidge administration, the immigration laws that came through his administration were really tough. And Americans were very fearful that relaxing these laws would increase the job competition and that Americans weren't going to have these jobs. And she said, you know what? I don't agree. The immigration service is under the Department of Labor.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

265.63

So Frances Perkins was born Fanny Coralai Perkins in Boston in 1880, but her relatives and her ancestors came from Maine. And it's kind of funny here at the beginning of this How Stuff Works thing, it says, she so undersung that even residents of her hometown of Damaris, Scotta, Maine didn't seem familiar with her legacy. I think that says more about Maine.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2650.634

And so I am going to put some quotas down to get some of these refugees here and to aid them. And she did that to great success.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2710.166

I'm going to call this Helping a Helper. And this is from Tawny. Tawny says this. Hey, guys, I've been sewing face masks for almost a month now, and I'm close to my 1,000th mask.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2723.515

That's a lot. I have given and donated to friends, family, coworkers. I'm a 911 dispatcher, by the way. Healthcare workers, retail workers, delivery people, postal workers, and other essential workers. People wearing funny hats. People wearing funny hats and complete strangers. Now that face masks have become mandatory here in San Diego...

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2743.922

The need has grown substantially, and through all of this, you three have been with me and keeping me company. I should talk about Jerry, too.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2758.484

Old episodes and new have entertained me through the tedious hours of cutting fabric, ironing, pinning, and sewing. I started listening to your podcast while I was in the Navy and soon introduced you guys to my husband, who is still in the military. We have both listened and learned through the years together. Thank you for continuing your show and helping the helpers of the world.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2778.708

Side note, love the 911 dispatcher episode, and thank you for clearing up the pizza order myth. Second side note... I wrote my master's thesis on the use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement, and I decided to focus on that topic after listening to that awesome episode. Oh, neat. Yeah, it's pretty cool. All three of you were thanked and mentioned in the thesis, even.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2801.885

When I'm tired and don't want to sew anymore, I think of this quote from Mr. Rogers. Head down. When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2820.55

And that is from Tawny, and that's a great quote, Tawny. I'm going to use that in my own house.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2845.114

Is it Tony? Tony, T-A-W-N-Y.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

302.34

She lived here, great, good for her.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

321.505

So is this like an Adidas Puma thing?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

425.741

Which one was that? Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode? I can't. Oh, baby. Hey, that's Emily's jam. I mean, she probably has that...

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

433.496

tattooed on her body somewhere uh and in fact we're both doing that none of my business we're both doing that that uh silly and i never do these things on facebook but i have time now the top 10 most influential albums and uh i was like which one are you gonna pick new order or depeche mode for her because that's a that's a tough one well i mean can't she's got 10 to choose from right yeah but i think for her those two are so inextricably tied that it was one or the other

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

462.19

And she went with Depeche Mode because they were first and thus probably more influential.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

505.32

Well, who can blame her because we'll see later on about her. It's no accident that she's lost a history in many ways.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

513.224

But what she was also was highly educated. She graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1902 where she majored in chemistry and physics even though she made her name in economics, which means she was a very well-rounded human and had a very large brain.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

548.36

Yeah, big time. This is post-college. She went to Philly. and she became general secretary of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

559.73

Well, she was in charge of investigating – employment agencies that were fake and that preyed on women, immigrant women specifically. And she had to sort of deal with the dregs of society in that job and did so very successfully and then decided she wanted to keep her education going.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

580.089

So while she was in Philly, she went to the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania because that's super easy and light learning. And then after that, She went to Columbia where she earned a M.A. in social economics in 1910.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

658.359

That's right. And after Columbia, after she got that master's, for two years she served as executive secretary of the Consumers League of New York. And this is where she really – felt her life calling to improve wages, improve working conditions, because this was 1910 through 1912, and things weren't great in factories at the time.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

684.76

We could do a podcast on – I don't know what the focus would be necessarily – Because we've done labor unions, but— Just labor conditions would be eye-opening.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

733.587

Yeah, she wouldn't stand around and wait for the statue to be built in her honor.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

738.674

Should we take a break? Yes. All right. We're going to take a break and talk about a pretty devastating fire in New York City that changed the course of her life right after this.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

871.618

What fire, Chuck? I'm talking about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in Manhattan, sort of near Washington Square Park in Greenwich, right next to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

886.05

It is, and I tried to pinpoint if that was the building where I actually had my film classes. Was it? I don't know. I can't quite tell. We got to know, Chuck. I'll see if I can find out. But a shirtwaist was a woman's blouse is what they called it at the time. And this was a factory that made women's blouses. If you worked there, you were probably a young woman. You might be an immigrant.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

911.632

You would work about 52 hours a week. Oh, I saw 12 hours a day, seven days a week. What does that math turn out to?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

928.053

Well, let's say between 52 and 80 hours a week.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

945.676

Right. So I saw 52. Either way, they made between $7 and $12 a week making these blouses for women.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

957.542

Yeah, it wasn't good. And because this was a factory in New York in 1911, they had the doors locked. They had the staircases locked. They thought it prevented theft.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

968.428

If you remember what happened to locked doors and stairwells in our hotel fire episode, the same thing happened here on March 25th, 1911, when the Triangle Shirtwaist fire started because they think of a match or a cigarette butt thrown into a waste bin. And it just, you know, everything in there was flammable practically that wasn't metal. Right.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

991.408

because of all these fabrics, like highly flammable. It went up really quick. It's one of the deadliest U.S. workplace disasters of all time to this day. 146 workers died, 123 of which were women and girls between the ages of generally between 14 and 23. The oldest was 43, but that was kind of an outlier. Mm-hmm.