'Becoming Madam Secretary' is inspiring tale

Frances Perkins isn't a name many people recognize. 

I sure wouldn't have, if I hadn't read a new historical novel, “Becoming Madam Secretary.” She was the first woman to become a Cabinet member — serving as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor during his three terms in office — and three months into his fourth term, when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. She helped design and implement FDR's New Deal recovery program, following the Great Depression.

It is Frances who had the vision for a “40-hour work week; a minimum wage; unemployment compensation; worker's compensation; abolition of child labor ... and Social Security.” She also worked to get industrial safety regulations in place — her idealism for this was accelerated by a horrific first-hand experience.

Frances was “having tea with friends in New York City's Washington Square when the group heard fire engines.” They followed, and she witnessed something of a 2001 9-11 scene — only this one was ironically 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Asch Building was engulfed in flames. She watched as 62 people, mainly women and girls, jumped or fell from the eighth and ninth floors to their deaths. A total of 146 garment workers were killed.

Doors to stairwells and exits were locked — to “prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft.” There also were no sprinklers in the building — and the foreman with the key to the stairway door saved himself by another route.

The accomplishments of Frances Perkins before and after becoming Madam Secretary in 1933 are impressive. She said, “I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten plain common workingmen.”

Frances was born in Boston in 1880 — where her father owned a stationery business. She spent her summers with her grandmother on the family farm in Maine. She describes her grandmother — a widow in her 70s — as “an extremely wise woman — worldly wise, as well as spiritually wise.” This wisdom guided Frances all her life.

It was not common for women to attend college in her era, but Frances did. The founder of Mount Holyoke said, “Education was to fit one to do good.” It was here that “Perk,” as she was called by classmates, took a course in American economic history and studied industrialism in England and America. She was required to visit mills along the Connecticut River to observe working conditions. Frances was appalled by what she saw and wanted to “do what I could to help change these abuses.” 

She eventually earned a master's degree in sociology and economics at New York's Columbia University. From there she was off and running. She'd come from a comfortable background — but she threw herself into an uncomfortable fight for workers' rights — and did so in a man's world. She once remarked, “Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.”

Frances Perkins was made to change her time — and in so doing profoundly affected my time. The good each one does might make waves — or spread ripples. But ocean, or lake, or pond — the water moves, and someone's life is touched and made glad.