CABINET MINISTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 252, 24 October 1934, Page 15

CABINET MINISTER.

AMERICA'S CLEVER WOMAN. "One of tlie most influential members of the Roosevelt Cabinet is Madam Secretary, Miss Frances Perkins. She is Cliief of the Department of .Labour," says an Australian woman who has lived for some years in the United States, and who is at present visiting her home country.

"The Cabinet took office ill March, 1933, and for a time the long-established Labour Department was overshadowed by the new National Recovery Administration that was sot up as part of the emergency programme to get people back to work. The National Recovery Administration stretched its tentacles out in all directions and took an active part intervening in Labour disputes, a function that properly belonged to the Labour Department. But the National Recovery Administration was :in the charge of General Hugh Johnson, a powerful personality, who has a picturesque but abusive vocabulary, and no tact. He did not show to advantage in the role of conciliator, and during the recent dispute i>' the steel industry, his personality became a serious handicap in the negotiations. It was then that Roosevelt remembered Madam Secretary, and she was called on to the job. The parties to the dispute were asked to attend n conference in Washington. The powerful steel owners thought they would soon overawe the neat little woman in the three-cornered hat, and they told her peremptorily they would confer with her, but not with the union representatives, whereupon to their amazement, she dismissed them. Since then the new National Labour Board, which in some ways is comparable to the Australian Court of Arbitration, has been s*t up in connection with the Department of Labour, and the influence of the Secretary of Labour has been growing rapidly. Under her historical hat her blue eyes are very bright. She is so charming and tactful and so Cleveland determined, and full of confidence in the future.

"She is now in her early fifties. They say she was very pretty when she "■raduated from college in 1902. She was the daughter of an old Bostonian family and had a Puritan fervour to right the wrongs of tlic under-privileged.. She found opportunities to get actual experience of their condition by working in Settlement Houses in Chicago and New York city, and became especially interested in factory conditions. In those days conditions in most of the factories were shocking, and for the most unregulated. She joined the band of liberals who were working to bring about better conditions and helped push through a 54hour week law in New \ork State. Politicians soon had to take notice of her, and by 1919 she had becomri Industrial Commissioner of New York State under Governor Al. Smith. She was reappointed by Roosevelt when he became Governor of the State. During these years a close friendship developed between herself and Mrs. Roosevelt, an important factor in her career, for it is generally believed that Mrs. Roosevelt influenced h?r husband to appoint Miss Perkins to his Cabinet when he became President. Miss Perkins needed a powerful friend at that time, for her appointment was opposed by the conservative group who resented her as a liberal and a woman; the radicals resented her because she was known to favour industrial peace by negotiation rather than by strikes; and the conservative labour unions organised into the American Federation of Labour, which lias considerable political influence, threatened to boycott her Department if she were appointed.

"Though she was a liberal she was not a unionist —they did boycott it for several weeks, but were soon forced to admit that her high powered intelligence was a great asset to them in the improvement of labour conditions. Miss Perkins has long been an enthusiast for the abolition of child labour, which has been accomplished, at any rate temporarily, tinder tlie National Industrial Recovery Act, and she advocates unemployment and old age insurance, which the President has promised to establish if the approaching Congressional elections strengthen the Democratic party. She is, in brief, a typical ' New Dealer,' even in her respect fq£ brains. Among others added to her staff is a well-known statistician, appointed to improve the statistics of unemployment, which up to the present have been largely guesswork in the United States. "As often as she can, Madam Secretary escapes from the hurly-burly of the capital to her home in New York city, and then people remember that she is the wife of Mr. Paul C. Wilson, a statistician and efficiency engineer, and the mother of ail adolescent girl."