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Biography · Chapter 12, 1911

Frances Perkins: The Witness Who Built the New Deal

A young reformer watched the fire and helped remake American government.

Frances Perkins, who witnessed the Triangle fire and became the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet.
Frances Perkins, who witnessed the Triangle fire and became the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet.Bain News Service, "Frances Perkins." Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection (LCCN 2014708218). Public domain.

Frances Perkins, then thirty years old and secretary of the New York Consumers' League, was at tea in a house on Washington Square when she heard the alarms and ran toward the building. She watched workers fall from the ninth-floor windows. Decades later she said that the New Deal began on that day. She served as an investigator for the Factory Investigating Commission, was appointed to the New York State Industrial Commission by Governor Al Smith in 1919, and became state Industrial Commissioner under Governor Franklin Roosevelt in 1929. In 1933 Roosevelt made her Secretary of Labor—the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. She chaired the committee that designed Social Security and championed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, with its minimum wage, maximum hours, and child-labor limits.

Sources

  1. Primary sourceFrances Perkins. The Triangle Factory Fire (lecture, 1964). Kheel Center, Cornell University ILR School.
  2. Government recordSenator Wagner and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. U.S. Senate Historical Office.
  3. ScholarshipLegislative Reform. Kheel Center, Cornell University ILR School.

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