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Celebrating Frances Perkins

GEORGE MARTIN

^SK anyone under forty-five: Who was Frances Perkins?
Chances arc, not one will know. Over forty-five, most
at least will recall that she was Secretary of Labor for
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the First Woman in the Cabinet. A few
may also remember that she had a large part in tlie adoption of old
age and unemployment insurance. Those with the clearest memo¬
ries are likely after a moment's thought to wonder why, in a time
of women's liberation, and of recession, she is not more celebrated.

There are several reasons—and one which was deeply embedded
in her character. So first, A\'ho was Frances Perkins?

She was a New Englander, born in 1880, who graduated from
Mount Holyoke in 1902, taught school for five years, did settle¬
ment work in Chicago and in 1909 came to New York. Here she
began to make a reputation as an expert on industrial and labor
problems, and in January 1919 Al Smith, starting his first term as
Governor, appointed her to the State's Industrial Commission.
The appointment stirred considerable excitement. Not only was
she the first woman to hold such a high administrative post in the
state government, but she persuaded Smith to appoint her under
her own name, though everyone knew she was married to a mu¬
nicipal reformer, Paul C. Wilson.

A woman's right to clioose her name was a battle she never
ceased to wage. The last recorded skirmish, when she was seventy-
seven, followed a lecture at Cornell. A reporter for the college