Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet secretary
and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. Perkins started her career
as a teacher but donated much of her
time to Chicago’s settlement houses, particularly Hull House. She later worked
at the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association, where she helped young
immigrant women.
Perkins spent most of her life advocating for better workers’ conditions.
When FDR was inaugurated in 1933, Perkins became his Labor Secretary. She
immediately laid out priorities for her work, including the abolition of child
labor, Social Security, and universal health care. She remained
in the cabinet throughout FDR’s presidency,
and was instrumental in constructing the New Deal. In fact, in 1945, Forbes described the New Deal as
“not so much the Roosevelt New Deal, as … the Perkins New Deal.”
