FRANCES PERKINS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 83, 9 April 1934, Page 13

FRANCES PERKINS

WOMAN IN CABINET

DECLINES FASHION LIFE

Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labour in the United States Cabinet, is undoubtedly one of the interesting figures in the . world today, states a writer in "Dawn." Born into an exclusive Boston circle, she declined the society career mapped out for her by society. After graduating from Mount Holyoke, she went out to Chicago where for a while she taught; then livid in the social settlements, studying social welfare under Graham Taylor and Jane Adams. Thus equipped, she took a position as a social worker in New York.

It was one Saturday afternoon, when oft duty, taking tea with some friends in Washington Square, that s she \vas_a horrified witness of the Triangle fire, in a clothing factory just the other side of the broad square. Floors uncleared of piled-up clippings, fire escapes .blocked, even an exit door locked, once fire started it wrou|lit its deadly will, and 146 working girls perished, some through smoke, others through leaping to the streets from the fifth floor windows. And yet, the building was fireproof, and except for the fittings, uninjured. Firemen walked across the floors in comfort a few hour." afterwards. At once it was realised that although New York's Fire Brigade system was all that could bo desired, but little had ever been done, in the way of preventing fires. A State Commission went into the matter, collecting' evidence, and presently sent Frances Perkins to Albany, the State Capital, to push through legislation covering fire prevention, and also other Bills to protect the health and the live-'of working people. . . .

SUPPORTED BY THREE MEMBERS,

■ -.Here she was supported by three young members, Franklin ■ Roosevelt, Al Smith, and Robert Wagner, now Senator Wagner, the leader in the long struggle for Federal unemployment insurance. What do they think of Frances Perkins? Al Smith when Governor ot New York State appointed her to a position on the State Industrial Commission, the State Labour Department, that is. When Franklin Roosevelt became Governor, he made her the head, with a-staff of 1800 men and. women; under her. , . One illustration of her keen insight into situations, as these arose, will suffice. It had been the practice of the State inspectors to travel by train to small- distant centres. As there- would bo one, or at most two trains daily, it was easy to keep tab on the movements of inspectors, and bo tidied up beforehand. Frances Perkins gave. instructions that travelling should be by automobile, so that inspectors could drop in, unannounced at any hour. \ One delighted feminist, a man, Oswald Garrison . Villard, of the New York "Nation," said, when President Roosevelt invited Frances Perkins into his Cabinet, that what "he rejoiced over was not the fact that there was.to bo a woman in the Cabinet, but that the President had not hesitated to appoint the best qualified person in sight, even although that person was a woman.