Frances Perkins was an incredibly influential American yet is virtually unknown. What did she do? A lot! For instance, Social Security was her brainchild. And that's just the tip of the old iceberg. Explore her legacy with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hello, friends. It's Josh. And for this week's Select, I've chosen our September 2020 episode on Frances Perkins. If you haven't heard of her, that's okay. She's one of the most unsung Americans ever and was even left out of the history books for a while, all because she was a woman. Check out this episode where Frances Perkins gets her due.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the amazing unsung woman edition, volume two at least. No, more than two. What number would you say then?
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.
I know. I'm not a big fan anyway.
You would be hard-pressed to overlook Ms. Perkins.
Yeah.
Ms. Frances Perkins.
Totally agree. Had never heard her name before. Had never even known she existed. But, yeah, the more you dig into her, the more you're just like, it was almost a crime that this woman was virtually written out of the history books.
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.
That's right. And every single person who's getting a check as measly as they've gotten lately is getting one because of this system that Frances Perkins set up. And what's really, I think, worth noting, too, is this is exactly the kind of situation that she got this passed for, that she helped design this for. Totally. Totally.
Because there's a quote, I can't remember exactly what a quote was, but to paraphrase it, it's basically like we need to always keep our eye on the long term and plan for the worst case scenario. While, yes, there's a lot of immediate needs that we need, but there's always going to be something that comes down the road. And if we have planned for it, we're way better off.
Just imagine how disastrous it would be on top of the current disaster if there wasn't such a thing as unemployment insurance. And this is how we found out that we really kind of need it.
Yeah, it would be dark ages stuff in this country.
Yeah. So if you have gotten your unemployment insurance check and it has helped you, thank Francis Perkins somehow.
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.
Mm-hmm.
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.
After she turned that essay in, you bet your bippy she did.
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.
Right. They're like, oh, we don't need to help her put on airs. Well, then just like, you know, I don't ask, I don't tell, I just don't, whatever.
She lived here, great, good for her.
I want to say also before the residents of Newcastle bust a vein in their forehead, she's also cited as a native of Newcastle, Maine. Oh, okay. And they're right across the Damariscotta River from one another. I think she's from Newcastle.
So is this like an Adidas Puma thing?
Maybe. Maybe, except imagine if neither town knew what shoes were. I think that would be a pretty accurate analogy. Oh, boy. I love the Mainers. So she came from really dyed-in-the-wool Yankee stock. Her family came over, I think, in the 1680s. Her family had built an outpost during the French-Indian War.
Her grandmother, who had more of an influence on her, she said, than anybody, had a cousin who she was close to who founded Howard University and fought for the rights of newly freed African-Americans. She came from like a long line of people who like cared about other people. Yeah. And yet, surprisingly, her parents were very conservative.
They were in favor of, you know, helping the poor, but not mingling with them helping them. Like, helping them by, like, you know, sending some money or something like that. Okay. And they produced a child, Fanny Francis. She changed her name, I think, in, I don't know, her 20s or 30s. She was the opposite way. She was like, no, like...
People are people, and they all deserve help, and there's a lot of injustice in this world, and I want to change it myself. And she's one of those people who actually did enact tremendous change for all the right reasons.
Yeah.
She said people are people, so why should it be? You and I should get along so awfully.
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...
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
I gotcha.
And she went with Depeche Mode because they were first and thus probably more influential.
Depeche Mode was before New Order, huh? Yes. I mean, technically, if you count New Order as an outcropping of Joy Division, then they were first. Oh, so, well, Joy Division was different, though. It was pretty different. Different enough that they might as well be two different bands.
Which they were.
You know who we need to give us the judgment call? Who? Is Frances Perkins, who apparently would not have enjoyed our banter. She was very much known as like a dour, serious woman. But from what I can tell, that's actually a public persona that she wore to get men to take her seriously. Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
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.
And apparently she had made it all the way through college. And in her senior year, I think she attended an economics lecture by Florence Kelly, who was a huge wage justice crusader. And that just changed her life.
Yeah, big time. This is post-college. She went to Philly. and she became general secretary of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association.
What did she do there?
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.
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.
And we should say like she's getting all of this schooling, but at the same time, she's also set herself off on a what's that like learn while you work program called? Internship. Internship. I guess so. That's not exactly what I'm looking for. But yeah, I mean, it makes sense. So she set herself up on a real world internship program.
So while she was in Philly working for that bureau, she was investigating those fake employment rackets. Like she was on the ground doing this stuff, like carrying out these inspections, investigating factories, like taking notes. In her early 20s. Yeah, basically, yeah.
While she's studying this stuff, she's also out doing and seeing the stuff firsthand that she's learning about, which, from what I can tell, she really kind of digested and held on to, and it just kept driving her for the rest of her life what she saw. I think that's called the School of Hard Knocks.
It is, but she enrolled in the Wharton School and the School of Hard Knocks at the same time, which is pretty impressive.
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.
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.
But there's—she did—this is one of the things she did. There's very few more depressing words than these strung together. She improved working conditions for children.
Yeah.
That was one of the things she did. I know. And that was at the Consumers League of New York. And she got there and was like, yes, I've achieved one of my first goals, which is working directly with the same Florence Kelly who gave the economics lecture that changed her life years before Mount Holyoke. That's right. Yeah.
So she was one of those ones who said, I want to do this and then would do it and then would move on to the next thing.
Yeah, she wouldn't stand around and wait for the statue to be built in her honor.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
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.
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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.
I think it's an NYU building now.
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.
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?
Let's see. 727. Wait, I can't do math out loud.
Well, let's say between 52 and 80 hours a week.
No, no. It was way more than that. 12 times 7 equals 84. Yeah, that's what I said. 84 hours a week. But like even that doesn't sound that big. 12-hour days, seven days a week just to keep your job.
Right. So I saw 52. Either way, they made between $7 and $12 a week making these blouses for women.
Which was not good even back then.
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.
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.
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.
And 62 of those people jumped to their death in front of full view of New York City, including Frances Perkins.
Right, in front of Frances Perkins. She didn't jump to her death. No, no, no. So she's literally witnessing one of the turning points in history. As it happens, seeing women, teenage girls jump out of the ninth floor of this building because it's on fire. And not only is she witnessing a fire that will change history, she is one of the people that will force history to change because of this fire.
The... the fate or the destiny that put her a block away from this fire when it happened is... It's just astounding to me that she was there because she went on to be one of the people who said, this is never going to happen again. And under her watch... It basically didn't. It was the worst that it ever got.
And it never got that bad again because of the safeguards she forced the state and then later on other states and the federal government to adopt.
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.
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.
Yeah, we need to do an entire episode on that. At the very least, just to shame the two owners who were just totally responsible for all those deaths.
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.
Yeah, it was. But at the same time, those guys were particularly nasty examples of the system. They weren't average by any means from what I understand. Yeah.
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.
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.
She did. She was appointed to the New York Committee on Safety under the recommendation of Teddy Roosevelt, which says a lot because that means she'd already made a name for herself in her 20s in New York City politics to the point where Teddy Roosevelt would say, like, you really kind of need this woman on there.
And then let's not forget the fact that the operative word here was woman as far as society was concerned at the time. And this legislation that she got passed through in New York or that she helped get passed through in New York, like I was saying, it became a model for other states and then eventually the federal fire codes. Right. because of this, largely because of her efforts.
And she made a name for herself. She'd already made a name for herself, but this really kind of helped cement her name. And she started working closely with a guy named Alfred E. Smith, who was an assemblyman from New York. But she won his respect pretty easily. I think they worked on this New York Committee on Safety together. And so when he became governor, she kind of rose along with him.
She was appointed by him to New York State's Industrial Commission, which made her the first woman to be appointed to a state government position in the country. And with her $8,000 salary, she was the highest paid woman to hold any office in the United States at the time. So she became important pretty quick. But she became important, everybody. This is really important to remember.
By hard work and heart, which is just a wonderful combination. Like amazing things happen from people who have that combination.
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.
And not just works harder. She was known as a policy expert about worker safety and wage justice by this time, too.
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?
No, we're not kidding at all, Chuck.
No, it's very much true.
So like you were saying, she first kind of rose to prominence with Alfred E. Smith, who, from what I could tell, I didn't get to research him very much. But the stuff that I ran across the references to him, he seemed like a genuine, like, true believer, crusader in justice, social justice as well. So they were like a good pair. And he made it as far as New York governor.
He ran for president and didn't win. And when he didn't win, he, I guess, lost the governorship and was succeeded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And so Roosevelt came into power in New York as the governor of New York. And Francis Perkins was already there and had already built up a reputation. And Roosevelt recognized... the kind of person she was pretty quickly.
Because a lot of people are, you know, you can give a lot of credit or a lot of vilification to Roosevelt for his New Deal policies, depending on your political stripes. But if you, you know, if you admire him for it, as I think most people should, he... It wasn't just him.
One of his great talents was to recognize talent in others and to bring those people together and then enact policies based on their expertise and their recommendations. And one of those people was Francis Perkins, starting when he was governor of New York and then also when he became president, too.
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.
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.
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?
Mm-hmm.
They really did. I mean, like she was the first cabinet, first woman to serve as a cabinet member. I mean, women had just gotten the right to vote about 13, 12 or 13 years before.
Dude, she couldn't vote until she was 40.
I know. Isn't that crazy? And yet she held public appointed offices and still couldn't vote.
But wasn't allowed to vote for her boss, essentially.
Right, exactly, yeah. So it was a really big deal that FDR appointed a woman to a cabinet position, and an important cabinet position, too. I mean, like, it's not like there's any necessarily unimportant cabinet positions, but Secretary of Labor is pretty big. Yeah, especially then. Yeah, especially then, right?
And especially, you know, at a time when this emerging superpower took a huge punch in the face and got knocked on its butt like the rest of the world by the Great Depression. This was important stuff that they were trying to figure out on the fly. But he chose a really great person who wasn't really accepted at first, not just by the public, but by virtually anybody.
The labor unions weren't happy she was there because she had a background in social work and policy, not labor.
Oh, yeah, that scared them to death.
Yes, but she eventually won them over just by virtue of what she did. Like the labor movement was on the ropes at the time. The progressive era ran from... I think 1890 to about 1920. So by the time 1929, 1930 comes around, it's dying off the labor movement. But under her leadership as the Department of Labor secretary, she revived it.
And by the time she either died or left office, I can't remember, I think a third of all Americans were members of unions, right?
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.
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.
It did, and it also helped reinforce and build out America's infrastructure too because they had all this labor that the government was putting to work doing it, right?
Yes.
So she was in charge of overseeing that. And one of the other, I guess the next big thing, I think it was before Social Security, was something called the Wagner Act.
Oh, I think you mean the Wagner Act. Yes.
The Wagner-Wagner Act, depending on your persuasion. It gave workers the right to unionize and the right to collectively bargain. And one of her roles was to go out and promote this stuff, not just to, you know, other members of the government or members of industry, but to individual Americans, too.
So in 1933 alone, she gave 100 different policy speeches in just that one year on New Deal projects, promoting them. And one of the speeches she gave, I don't know if it was in that year or not, but she went to Homestead, Pennsylvania, right across the river from Pittsburgh, where Carnegie Steel was headquartered.
And she was going to inform these workers about their newly won rights through the Wagner Act. And Carnegie Steel and the local government would not give her any place to hold this meeting. They wouldn't give the secretary of labor a place to talk to voters. So she, and there's apparently a famous picture of her leading all of these steel workers on foot to a post office.
She's like, oh, I can think of a place where I can assemble legally, and that is the post office. So she gave her speech on the grounds of the Homestead Post Office to thousands of steel workers, informing them that they could legally unionize and bargain collectively for workers' rights.
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.
Yeah, mostly the second one.
All right, so I'm going to pass that buck.
Right.
The buck stops over there. Well, we're making up for it now either way.
Okay, Chuck, so we were saying at the outset that if you got an unemployment check, thank Frances Perkins. Or if you ever get an unemployment check, if you even like the idea of the fact that an unemployment insurance policy is out there for you in case you ever need it, thank Frances Perkins.
And the reason you thank Frances Perkins is because she basically oversaw the creation of the legislation that became the Social Security Act of 1935. And when I say oversaw the creation of that legislation, like she, that was it. She was the head of this cabinet level committee that was assigned the task of coming up with a social insurance policy, a social safety net for the country.
And they came up with this within six months successfully. this full policy report. And within two days of delivering the report, FDR turned around and unveiled the Social Security program idea to Congress. And another six months or so later, maybe eight, it passed into law.
Yeah, and boy, we should do one on Social Security at some point.
I agree. I think we have, man. I'm almost positive. Yeah, it really rings a bell.
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.
Who is it? Tommy Chong?
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.
Yeah. While we're reading these emails, while we're having to sweep up the studio. Yeah.
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.
And I feel like it really shows in the podcast.
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.
Self-deprecation, Chuck. That's our specialty. That's right. That's right.
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Stuff it.
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.
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.
Right. That's the brilliance of the whole thing is it's a transfer payment system to where you are directly funding the people who have retired now. But it's on the premise that people behind you are going to fund into this to support you later on. Right. It's beautiful. It's a genius idea.
And apparently FDR sent her, Frances Perkins, to study the British system of unemployment insurance even before he was president, back when he was governor of New York. And he became the first public official to commit to developing an unemployment insurance plan. And it was at the persistent behest of Frances Perkins that he did that.
Yeah. And it's not like, I mean, he didn't run for office with Social Security on his list of things to do.
Well, yeah, that's the thing. A lot of people say, like, if it weren't for her, no joke, this stuff probably wouldn't exist. Certainly not in the form that it does now. And that's not necessarily fair. There are, like, there were programs that had, like, Social Security-type programs among the states, including unemployment programs, but they were ad hoc. They were patchwork.
Most states didn't have them. And it's kind of the... the beauty of the federal program is they're basically like, okay, states do this, but we're going to oversee it and organize it and help fund it.
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.
But what I want to do is make sure another fire doesn't happen in the future.
Yes, and that was like her whole thing. Like we do need to make sure that people get peanut butter sandwiches because their families are going to starve. Like, yes, these immediate needs have to be met, but we also simultaneously have to plan for the future too. It was just this persistent drum that she beat. Like we're going to continue to have problems. Let's plan for them now.
Like the level of visionariness – In this person was, you just don't see that. I can't think of too many other people who've come and gone in the federal government, in the United States at least, that had that level of, I guess, awareness of looking down the line that far rather than just, you know, four years out or to the next election. Yeah.
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?
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.
And you can make the case, Chuck, that she is the woman who gave America's kids the concept of a childhood.
Yeah.
At the very least, she extended it by many, many years.
Totally.
I've got another amazing fact about her. She, I believe, is the first cabinet member who Congress ever sought to impeach. Oh, really? Yes. I'm almost positive that's correct. I know that they did try to impeach her and they failed in the impeachment, not just the conviction. They couldn't get enough support for articles of impeachment.
But it was because she refused to deport an Australian longshoreman who'd successfully organized a general strike in San Francisco. And the anti-communist elements in Congress suspected that this guy was a communist and wanted him out. And she said, you know, I don't think very highly of this guy. I don't really agree with a lot of what he stands for.
But I don't think that you have really good evidence. And I think this is all retaliation for the strike you organized. So I'm not going to deport him. And you might say, well, what did this lady have to do with deporting? Apparently, back in the day, the immigration system the power of immigration or control of immigration was up to the Department of Labor.
So the Secretary of Labor was also in charge of immigration, which really kind of gives you an idea of where America's immigration policies, you know, where their mind was at.
Yeah.
That it was about importing, you know, good workers or also controlling who came in to keep competition for jobs down.
Totally. Yeah.
So she was in charge of immigration, which, as we'll see later on, she used to great effect.
Is that our cherry on top at the end?
Yeah, I think so. Okay. That's a good idea. It's the kid with the last question in Q&A.
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.
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 –
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.
Yeah, which is kind of a bummer. Some people might say it's a bummer. Some people might say good. Sure. She also played drums for Dokken for a brief time. For a little bit. She did it all. And all while wearing a frumpy tricornered hat. Yeah.
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.
Yes, there are a couple of other things to throw in too. Both her husband and her daughter suffered from what we today call bipolar disorder. She cared for them their entire lives. That little thing. Yeah, right.
Can you imagine? Yeah.
No, while she's doing all this other stuff, she made sure that they were cared for, took care of them directly herself. And one of the other things I think is worth mentioning, too, that before FDR became president, while she was working in New York, she was already known publicly as,
before she became secretary of labor, because she was the first, uh, public official to call Hoover out on his BS when he was downplaying, uh, joblessness numbers and unemployment figures. Um, and just general terrible economic news and pretending things were way better than they were, she was the first person to step up and publicly contradict him and made national news for that. Wow.
And, you know, again, this is a woman doing this in, like, 1930, so just that alone makes national news, but she was also calling him out on his BS. And one thing that we have to say before you finish with the cherry on top, Chuck, is she had guys figure it out. She had a folder called, called Notes on the Male Mind.
And she would just take notes on guys and men that she worked with and just kind of try to get an understanding of them. And she realized that the way to get male colleagues to treat you normally or maybe even respect you is to remind them of their mother. Wow. That's what it takes apparently to get a guy to treat a woman with respect at work.
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.
It almost seems malicious in a weird way. Like, I like to think that that's not the case, but what other explanation is there?
It's nuts.
It's weird.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, she made sure that about at least 55,000 Jewish German immigrants made their way into the United States through these Department of Labor immigration quotas. And another, I think, 200,000 people in general were rescued from Europe as World War II was starting to develop over there because of her.
Just on top of everything else, she also saved a bunch of tens of thousands of Jewish people from Hitler in World War II. Amazing. Amazing Chuck. I guess that's it for Frances Perkins, huh? That's it. Well, if you want to know more about Frances Perkins, go start reading about her because there's even more detail to her life than we captured here. And she's worth reading about.
Very admirable person. And since I said admirable, it's time for Listener Mail.
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.
Nice.
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...
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.
Well, yeah. Okay. If she wasn't talking about Tommy Chong, I'll tell you that.
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.
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.
Oh, that's cool.
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.
Go to them, and they will help you.
And that is from Tawny, and that's a great quote, Tawny. I'm going to use that in my own house.
It's kind of like if you're afraid of flying, watch the flight attendants, and as long as they're not freaking out, you're fine. It's the exact same thing. He's saying when the S goes down, there's people helping, so that's always good. God bless Mr. Rogers and you, Tony. Oh, man, man. Yep, thanks a lot.
Is it Tony? Tony, T-A-W-N-Y.
I couldn't tell if you were just putting a little mustard on the Tony. No, like Tawny Katane. Sure, yeah, from the Whitesnake videos. That cultural icon. Well, thanks a lot, Tawny. I apologize for Chuck calling you Tawny Katane. Okay. Can I apologize for you, Charles? Sure. Okay. Well, I'm going to do that. If you want to get me to apologize for Charles, let's see if you can do it.
You can send us an email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
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