Stuff You Should Know - Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown
Episode Date: September 8, 2020Frances Perkins was an incredibly influential American yet is virtually unknown. What did she do? A lot! For instance, Social Security was her brainchild. And that's just the tip of the old iceberg. ...Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,
David Lasher and Christine Taylor,
stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,
bring you back to the days of slip dresses
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
It's called Stuff You Should Know,
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and this is Stuff You Should Know,
the amazing Unsung Woman edition, volume two at least.
No, more than two.
What number would you say then?
I don't know, but I tell you what,
if you wanna take a vote on maybe one of the most undersung
while at the same time being most influential Americans
to ever live.
Neil Diamond.
You be, oh, he was very sung.
I know, I'm not a big fan anyway.
You would be hard-pressed to overlook Ms. Perkins.
Yeah.
Ms. Frances Perkins.
Totally agree.
Had never heard her name before,
had never even known she existed,
but yeah, the more you dig into it,
the more you just like, it was almost a crime
that this woman was virtually written out of the history books.
Yeah, and if you are one of those people
who was unfortunate to not be able to work right now
during quarantine and the effects of COVID-19,
and you are not lucky enough,
but deservedly enough receiving unemployment insurance,
you can thank Frances Perkins for that.
That's right, and every single person
who's getting a check as measly as they've gotten lately
is getting one because of this system
that Frances Perkins set up.
And what's really, I think worth noting too,
is this is exactly the kind of situation
that she got this pass for,
that she helped design this for.
Totally.
Because there's a quote,
I can't remember exactly where to quote was,
but to paraphrase it, it's basically like,
we need to always keep our eye on the long term
and plan for the worst case scenario.
While, yes, there's a lot of immediate needs that we need,
but there's always going to be something
that comes down the road,
and if we have planned for it, we're way better off.
Just imagine how disastrous it would be
on top of the current disaster
if there wasn't such a thing as unemployment insurance.
And this is how we found out that we really kind of need it.
Yeah, it would be dark ages stuff in this country.
Yeah.
So if you have gotten your unemployment insurance check
and it has helped you thank Frances Perkins somehow.
Yeah, and we want to thank How Stuff Works.
That's where part of this research came from
and some other places, but notably,
and I want to shout this out
because this is a library intern at the FDR library
who wrote a paper called Honoring the Achievements
of FDR Secretary of Labor, Jessica Breitman.
This is really good stuff, and she's a library intern
and we want to shout her out.
Yeah, she did great.
Or she was at the time,
I imagine she's moved on from that internship.
After she turned that essay in, you bet you're bippy, she did.
So Frances Perkins was born Fanny Coralai Perkins
in Boston in 1880,
but her relatives and her ancestors came from Maine.
And it's kind of funny here,
at the beginning of this How Stuff Works thing, it says,
she's so undersung that even residents of her hometown
of Damaris, Scott of Maine,
didn't seem familiar with her legacy.
I think that says more about Maine.
You're right.
They're like, oh, we don't need to help her put on airs.
Well, then just like, you know, I don't ask, I don't tell.
I just don't, whatever.
She lived here great, good for her.
I want to say also before the residents of Newcastle
bust a vein in their forehead,
she's also cited as a native of Newcastle, Maine.
And they're right across the Damaris, Scott of River
from one another.
I think she's from Newcastle.
That's why I guess.
So is this like a Adidas Puma thing?
Maybe, maybe, except imagine if neither town
knew what shoes were.
I think that would be a pretty accurate analogy.
Oh boy, I love the Mainers.
So she, yeah, she was, she came from really like,
died in the wool Yankee stock.
Her family came over, I think in the 1680s.
Her, she had like, her family had built an outpost
during the French Indian War.
Her grandmother, who had more of an influence on her,
she said than anybody, had a cousin who she was close to,
who founded Howard University and fought for the rights
of newly freed African-Americans.
She came from like a long line of people who like,
cared about other people.
And yet, surprisingly, her parents were very conservative.
They were in favor of helping the poor,
but not mingling with them helping them.
Like helping them by like, sending some money
or something like that.
And they produced a child, Fanny Francis.
She changed her name, I think in,
I don't know, her 20s or 30s.
She was the opposite way.
She was like, no, like people are people
and they all deserve help.
And there's a lot of injustice in this world
and I want to change it myself.
And she's one of those people who actually did
enact tremendous change for all the right reasons.
Yeah, she said, people are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully.
Which one was that?
Depesh mode. Depesh mode?
I can't. Oh, baby.
Hey, that's Emily's jam.
I mean, she probably has that tattooed
on her body somewhere.
And in fact, we're both doing that.
You're like, it's none of my business.
We're both doing that silly.
And I never do these things on Facebook,
but I have time now, the top 10 most influential albums.
And I was like, which one are you gonna pick?
New order or Depesh mode for her?
Cause that's a tough one.
Well, I mean, can't, she's got 10 to choose from, right?
Yeah, but I think for her,
those two are so inextricably tied
that it was one or the other.
I gotcha.
And she went with Depesh mode cause they were first
and thus probably more influential.
Depesh mode was before new order, huh?
Yes.
I mean, technically, if you count new order
as an outcropping of Joy Division, then they were first.
Oh, so well, Joy Division was different though.
It was pretty different.
Different enough that they might as well
be two different bands.
Which they were.
You know who we need to give us the judgment call
is Francis Perkins,
who apparently would not have enjoyed our banter.
She was very much known as like a dour serious woman.
But from what I can tell,
that's actually a public persona that she wore
to get men to take her seriously.
Well, who can blame her?
Because we'll see later on about her.
It's no accident that she's lost a history in many ways.
But what she was also was highly educated.
She graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1902,
where she majored in chemistry and physics,
even though she made her name in economics,
which means she was a very well-rounded human
and had a very large brain.
And apparently she had made it all the way through college.
And in her senior year,
I think she attended an economics lecture by Florence Kelly,
who was a huge wage justice crusader.
And that just changed her life.
Yeah, big time.
In 19, this is post college, she went to Philly,
and she became General Secretary
of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association.
What did she do there?
Well, she was in charge of investigating
employment agencies that were fake,
and that preyed on women, immigrant women specifically.
And she had to sort of deal with the dregs of society
in that job and did so very successfully.
And then decided she wanted to keep her education going.
So while she was in Philly,
she went to the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce
at the University of Pennsylvania,
because that's super easy in light, learning.
And then after that, she went to Columbia,
where she earned MA in social economics in 1910.
And we should say like she's getting all of this schooling,
but at the same time, she's also set herself off on a,
what's that like learn while you work program called?
Internship.
I guess so, that's not exactly what I'm looking for.
But yeah, I mean, it makes sense.
So she set herself up on a real world internship program.
So while she was in Philly working for that, that bureau,
she was investigating those fake employment rackets.
Like she was on the ground doing this stuff,
like carrying out these inspections,
investigating factories, like taking notes.
And early 20s.
Yeah, basically, yeah.
While she's studying this stuff,
she's also outdoing and seeing the stuff firsthand
that she's learning about, which from what I can tell,
she really kind of digested and held on to.
And it just kept driving her for the rest of her life,
what she saw.
I think that's called the School of Hard Knocks.
It is, but she enrolled in the Wharton School
and the School of Hard Knocks at the same time,
which is pretty impressive.
That's right.
And after Columbia, after she got that masters,
for two years, she served as Executive Secretary
of the Consumers League of New York.
And this is where she really felt her life calling
to improve wages, improve working conditions,
because this was 1910 through 1912.
And things weren't great in factories at the time.
We could do a podcast on,
I don't know what the focus would be necessarily,
because we've done labor unions, but...
Just labor conditions would be eye-opening.
But this is one of the things she did.
There's very few more depressing words
than these strung together.
She improved working conditions for children.
Yeah.
That was one of the things she did.
I know.
And that was at the Consumers League of New York.
And she got there and was like,
yes, I've achieved one of my first goals,
which is working directly with the same Florence Kelly,
who gave the economics lecture
that changed her life years before Mount Holyoke.
That's right.
Yeah.
So she was one of those ones who said,
I want to do this, and then we'd do it.
And then we'd move on to the next thing.
Yeah.
She wouldn't stand around and wait for the statue
to be built in her honor.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
So we take a break?
Yes.
All right.
We're gonna take a break and talk about
a pretty devastating fire in New York City
that changed the course of her life right after this.
["The New York City of New York City"]
On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called
David Lasher and Christine Taylor,
stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,
bring you back to the days of slip dresses
and choker necklaces.
We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,
but we are going to unpack and dive back
into the decade of the 90s.
We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends
to come back and relive it.
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co-stars, friends, and nonstop references
to the best decade ever.
Do you remember going to Blockbuster?
Do you remember Nintendo 64?
Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?
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No, it was hair.
Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger
and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?
So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,
because you'll want to be there
when the nostalgia starts flowing.
Each episode will rival the feeling
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as we take you back to the 90s.
Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s,
called on the iHeart Radio app,
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["Stuff You Should Know"]
What fire, Chuck?
I'm talking about the Triangle Shirt Waste Fire
in Manhattan, sort of near Washington Square Park
and Greenwich, right next to Washington Square Park.
Yeah.
In Greenwich Village.
I think it's an NYU building now.
It is, and I tried to pinpoint,
if that was the building where I actually
had my film classes.
Was it?
I don't know, I can't quite tell.
We gotta know, Chuck.
I'll see if I can find out.
But a shirt waste was a woman's blouse,
is what they called it at the time.
And this was a factory that made women's blouses.
If you worked there, you were probably a young woman.
You might be an immigrant.
You would work about 52 hours a week.
Oh, I saw 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
What does that math turn out to?
Let's see, 70, 720.
Wait, I can't do math out loud.
Well, let's say between 52 and 80 hours a week.
No, no, it was way more than that.
12 times seven, 84.
Yeah, that's what I said.
84 hours a week.
But even that doesn't sound that big.
12 hour days, seven days a week, just to keep your job.
Right, so I saw 52.
Either way, they made between seven and $12 a week
making these blouses for women.
Which was not good even back then.
Yeah, it wasn't good.
And because this was a factory in New York in 1911,
they had the doors locked, they had the staircases locked,
they thought it prevented theft.
If you remember what happened to locked doors
and stairwells in our hotel fire episode,
the same thing happened here on March 25th, 1911
when the triangle shirt waste fire started
because they think of a match or a cigarette
but thrown into a waste bin.
And it just, everything in there was flammable practically
that wasn't metal because of all these fabrics
like highly flammable.
It went up really quick.
It's one of the deadliest U.S. workplace disasters
of all time to this day, 146 workers died,
123 of which were women and girls
between the ages of, generally between 14 and 23,
the oldest was 43, but that was kind of an outlier.
And 62 of those people jumped to their death
in front of full view of New York City,
including Francis Perkins.
Right, in front of Francis Perkins,
she didn't jump to her death.
No, no, no.
So she, yeah, she's literally witnessing
one of the turning points in history as it happens,
seeing women, teenage girls jump out of the ninth floor
of this building because it's on fire.
And not only is she witnessing a fire
that will change history,
she is one of the people that will force history
to change because of this fire.
The fate or the destiny that put her a block away
from this fire when it happened is,
it's just astounding to me that she was there
because she went on to be one of the people
who said, this is never going to happen again.
And under her watch, it basically didn't.
It was the worst that it ever got.
And it never got that bad again
because of the safeguards she forced the state
and then later on other states
and the federal government to adopt.
Yeah, I mean, she was already kind of headed down
this road anyway.
She was already part of the New York State
Factory Investigating Commission.
And because of this fire, which I don't think we said,
she was just having tea across the park there,
ran over and saw this, one of the things she saw
that at one point there were 20 people
that had managed to get out a window onto a fire escape,
one of those tiny little flimsy New York fire escapes.
And all 20 of those people, the thing collapsed
and they all fell to their 100 feet to their death
right in front of her face.
Yeah, we need to do an entire episode on that
at the very least just to shame the two owners
who were just totally responsible for all those deaths.
Yeah, absolutely.
But this was sort of just the way it was.
I mean, not absolving them, but she saw this
as part of the bigger problem.
Not like these two owners are responsible,
but she was like, it was an indictment of the system.
Yeah, it was, but at the same time,
those guys were particularly nasty examples of the system.
They weren't average by any means from what I understand.
No, but what was average was the fact
that they didn't have fire codes.
And she's the person that brought that in.
By the time she was in her early 30s,
she had called for and successfully called
for exit signs, occupancy limits, sprinklers,
fire escapes, unlocked doors and stairwells,
how wide the doorways had to be,
depending on your factory floor.
Like all these sort of common sense things.
Like a lot of people saw this stuff happen
and saw this incident that day and were horrified.
But Francis Perkins said, nope, I'm gonna change it.
I'm a woman in 1911 and I'm in my early 30s,
but I'm gonna make this happen and she did.
She did.
She was appointed to the New York Committee on Safety
under the recommendation of Teddy Roosevelt,
which says a lot because that means
she'd already made a name for herself in her 20s
in New York City politics to the point
where Teddy Roosevelt would say like,
you really kind of need this woman on there.
And then let's not forget the fact
that the operative word here was woman
as far as society was concerned at the time.
And this legislation that she got passed through in New York
or that she helped get passed through in New York,
like I was saying, it became a model for other states
and then eventually the federal fire codes
because of this, largely because of her efforts.
And she made a name for herself,
she'd already made a name for herself,
but this really kind of helped cement her name.
And she started working closely
with a guy named Alfredie Smith,
who was an assemblyman from New York, right?
But he, she won his respect pretty easily.
I think they worked on this New York Committee
on Safety together.
And so when he became governor,
she kind of rose along with him.
She was appointed by him
to New York State's Industrial Commission,
which made her the first woman to be appointed
to a state government position in the country.
And with her $8,000 salary,
she was the highest paid woman to hold any office
in the United States at the time.
So she became important pretty quick,
but she became important everybody.
This is really important to remember,
by hard work and heart,
which is just a wonderful combination.
Like amazing things happen
from people who have that combination.
Yeah, and she ingratiated herself
to these male politicians a couple of different
important times in her life.
And the first one was Alfredie Smith,
like you were saying.
So she rose along with him
because he knew he was like,
man, I don't care if she's a woman or not.
She works harder than anyone I know,
and she gets the job done.
So I'm just gonna bring her along with me.
And that just works harder.
She was known as a policy expert
about worker safety and wage justice by this time too.
Well, yeah, I mean, I talked about her very large brain.
And her higher education, she was super, super smart.
She, like I said, she majored in chemistry and physics,
even though her real love was econ.
So it's like, are you kidding me?
No, we're not kidding at all, Chuck.
No, it's very much true.
So like you were saying,
she first kind of rose to prominence with Alfredie Smith,
who from what I could tell,
I didn't get to research him very much,
but the stuff that I ran across the references to him,
he seemed like a genuine like true believer,
crusader and justice, social justice as well.
So they were like a good pair.
And he made it as far as New York governor.
He ran for president and didn't win.
And when he didn't win, he I guess lost the governorship
and was succeeded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And so Roosevelt came into power in New York
as the governor of New York.
And Francis Perkins was already there
and it already built up a reputation.
And Roosevelt recognized the kind of person
she was pretty quickly.
Cause a lot of people are, you know,
you can give a lot of credit or a lot of vilification
to Roosevelt for his new deal policies
depending on your political stripes.
But if you, you know, if you admire him for it,
as I think most people should,
it wasn't just him.
One of his great talents was to recognize talent in others
and to bring those people together
and then enact policies based on their expertise
and their recommendations.
And one of those people was Francis Perkins
starting when he was governor of New York
and then also when he became president too.
Yeah, so when he came into his governorship,
she had already been named and was the chairperson
called a chairman back then in 1926
of the state industrial board.
She was doing a great job there.
And then in 1929, FDR appointed her
as the industrial commissioner of the state of New York.
And what happens?
The stock market crashes.
The Great Depression hits America
like a punch in the face.
And she was the one who stepped in
and got it in his ear and said, you know what?
Like, I know that we have to feed people right now.
We have really immediate needs.
But like you mentioned earlier in the episode,
she thought about the big picture and long-term goals.
She said, we need to really take swift action here.
So with her help, they created a committee on employment.
He appointed her the head of that.
And then when he was elected president in 1933,
he said, you know what?
I'm gonna point you to be my secretary of labor.
That was huge.
I've been working with you for 20 years.
I trust you and you're gonna do a great job.
And the public roundly said, what, a woman in the cabinet?
They really did.
I mean, like she was the first woman to serve it
as a cabinet member.
I mean, women had just gotten the right to vote
about 12 or 13 years before.
So-
Dude, she couldn't vote till she was 40.
I know.
Isn't that crazy?
And yet she held public appointed offices
and still couldn't vote.
But wasn't allowed to vote for her boss, essentially.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
So it was a really big deal
that FDR appointed a woman to a cabinet position.
And an important cabinet position too.
I mean, like, it's not like there's any necessarily
unimportant cabinet positions,
but secretary of labor is pretty big.
Yeah, especially then.
Yeah, especially then, right?
And especially, you know, at a time when this emerging
superpower took a huge punch in the face
and got knocked on its butt like the rest of the world
by the Great Depression, this was important stuff
that they were trying to figure out on the fly.
But he chose a really, really great person
who wasn't really accepted at first,
not just by the public, but by virtually anybody.
The labor unions weren't happy she was there
because she had a background in social work and policy,
not labor.
Oh yeah, that scared them to death.
Yes, but she eventually won them over
just by virtue of what she did.
Like the labor movement was on the ropes at the time.
The progressive era ran from, I think 1890 to about 1920.
So by the time 1929, 1930 comes around,
it's dying off the labor movement.
But under her leadership as the department
of labor secretary, she revived it.
And by the time she either died or left office,
I can't remember, I think a third of all Americans
were members of unions.
Yeah, and pre the union stuff,
like kind of right after the Great Depression hit,
one of the first things they did together
was created the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC,
which was a really big success,
one of the big early successes of the New Deal,
in that they said, you know what, we have all this,
we have this workforce of these unskilled unmarried men.
And let's get these guys working in conservation.
But we have these vast areas of rural land
and natural resources.
And let's send these guys out there to work on this stuff.
And they did, and it provided a ton of jobs
to the Civilian Conservation Corps.
It did, and it also helped reinforce
and build out America's infrastructure too,
because they had all this labor
that the government was putting to work doing it, right?
So she was in charge of overseeing that.
And one of the other, I guess the next big thing,
I think it was before Social Security,
was something called the Wagner Act.
And the Wagner Act gave-
Oh, I think you mean the Wagner Act.
The Wagner-Wagner Act, depending on your persuasion.
It gave workers the right to unionize
and the right to collectively bargain.
And one of her roles was to go out and promote this stuff,
not just to other members of the government
or members of industry, but to individual Americans too.
So in 1933 alone, she gave 100 different policy speeches
in just that one year on New Deal projects, promoting them.
And one of the speeches she gave,
I don't know if it was in that year or not,
but she went to Homestead, Pennsylvania,
right across the river from Pittsburgh,
where Carnegie Steel was headquartered.
And she was going to inform these workers
about their newly won rights through the Wagner Act.
And Carnegie Steel and the local government
would not give her any place to hold this meeting.
They wouldn't give the secretary of labor
a place to talk to voters.
So she, and there's apparently a famous picture
of her leading all of these steel workers on foot
to a post office.
She's like, oh, I can think of a place
where I can assemble legally.
And that is the post office.
So she gave her speech on the grounds
of the Homestead post office to thousands of steel workers
informing them that they could legally unionize
and bargain collectively for workers' rights.
That's amazing.
I feel like we had to have talked about her
in our union's episode, and if we didn't, shame on us,
but also shame on the fact that she probably didn't
pop up in our research, which is one of the problems.
Yeah, mostly the second one.
All right, so we're gonna pass that buck.
Great, the buck stops over there.
Well, we're making up for it now, either way.
Okay, Chuck, so we were saying at the outset
that if you got an unemployment check,
thank Francis Perkins, or if you ever get
an unemployment check, if you even like the idea
of the fact that an unemployment insurance policy
is out there for you in case you ever need it,
thank Francis Perkins.
And the reason you thank Francis Perkins
is because she basically oversaw the creation
of the legislation that became the Social Security Act
of 1935, and when I say oversaw the creation
of that legislation, like she, that was it.
She was the head of this cabinet-level committee
that was assigned the task of coming up
with a social insurance policy, a social safety net
for the country, and they came up with this
within six months, this full policy report,
and within two days of delivering the report,
FDR turned around and unveiled
the Social Security Program idea to Congress,
and another six months or so later,
maybe eight passed into law.
Yeah, and boy, we should do one on Social Security
at some point.
I agree, I think we have, man, I'm always positive.
Yeah, it really rings a bell.
Go ahead, I'm looking at it.
Well, no, I'm gonna have our little,
our assistant over here check that.
Can you go and check on that?
Okay, they're on it.
Who is, are you Tommy Chong?
Like we've ever had anyone that worked for us.
That's the funny thing, is when we get emails
over the years that like, well, to Josh and Chuck
and Jerry or whoever on your staff is reading this,
it's like, yeah, it's pretty much us.
Yeah, while we're reading these emails,
while we're having to sweep up the studio.
Well, I wanna be fair, to be fair,
we work for a big podcasting network
and there are a lot of people
that help us get stuff out in the world,
but we have never had like a stuff,
you should know, staff of eight people
who only work for us and research for us
and all that stuff.
And I feel like it really shows in the podcast.
I feel like, I'm glad you said that
cause I felt like I was patting ourselves
on the back for a second there.
The opposite.
But you dashed that very fast.
Sure, self-deprecation Chuck, that's our specialty.
That's right.
So social security, what we're talking about in general,
everyone knows what this is,
is basically a system where younger,
hearty people working hard in this country
help out older people, retired people,
perhaps disabled people,
people that have had work-related accidents.
People who wear funny hats.
People who wear funny hats.
And pay into this system that ideally,
and we're not gonna get into the weeds here
that would come on our social security podcast,
but ideally then when you are old or in need,
then you have that same money waiting for you
because of the younger generation and the younger workforce.
Right, that's the brilliance of the whole thing
is it's a transfer payment system
to where you are directly funding
the people who have retired now,
but it's on the premise that people behind you
are going to fund into this to support you later on.
It's beautiful.
It's a genius idea.
And apparently FDR sent her Francis Perkins
to study the British system of unemployment insurance
even before he was president,
back when he was governor of New York.
And he became the first public official
to commit to developing an unemployment insurance plan.
And it was at the persistent behest
of Francis Perkins that he did that.
Yeah, and it's not like,
I mean, he didn't run for office
with social security on his list of things to do.
Well, yeah, that's the thing.
A lot of people say like, if it weren't for her,
no joke, this stuff probably wouldn't exist.
Certainly not in the form that it does now.
And that's not necessarily fair.
There were programs that had
like social security type programs among the states,
including unemployment programs,
but they were ad hoc, they were patchwork.
Most states didn't have them.
And it's the kind of the beauty of the federal program
is they're basically like, okay, states do this,
but we're going to oversee it and organize it
and help fund it.
Yeah, and it's not like I was saying that all the FDR
was like not a champion of it or was just lazy.
He had a bunch of stuff going on
and he had a bunch of irons in the fire.
So he needed her to come in and say,
hey, listen, this is all great
because we're in a tragic situation right now.
We're trying to put out a fire,
but what I want to do is make sure another fire
doesn't happen in the future.
Yes, and that was like her whole thing.
Like we do need to make sure
that people get peanut butter sandwiches
because their families are going to starve.
Like yes, these immediate needs have to be met,
but we also simultaneously have to plan for the future too.
It was just this persistent drum that she beat.
Like we're going to continue to have problems.
Let's plan for them now.
Like the level of visionariness in this person was,
you just don't see that.
I can't think of too many other people who've come and gone
in the federal government in the United States at least
that had that level of, I guess,
awareness of looking down the line that far
rather than just four years out or to the next election.
Yeah, and she also,
we talked about some of the things she did earlier
in terms of her career,
in terms of fair labor practices.
But once she was secretary of labor,
she had real teeth to make real change.
And during her tenure,
she helped craft the Fair Labor Standards Act.
She helped establish minimum wage laws,
maximum work hours laws.
And she finally said, you know what?
Maybe we shouldn't make labor for children better.
Maybe we should not bring our children to work
and make them work.
So let's just get rid of child labor altogether.
And you can make the case, Chuck,
that she is the woman who gave America's kids
the concept of a childhood.
At the very least, she extended it by many, many years.
Totally.
I've got another amazing fact about her.
She, I believe, is the first cabinet member
who Congress ever sought to impeach.
Oh, really?
Yes, I'm almost positive that's correct.
I know that they did try to impeach her
and they failed in the impeachment,
not just the conviction.
They couldn't get enough support
for articles of impeachment.
But it was because she refused to deport
an Australian longshoreman
who'd successfully organized a general strike
in San Francisco.
And the anti-communist elements in Congress
suspected that this guy was a communist
and wanted him out.
And she said, you know,
I don't think very highly of this guy.
I don't really agree with a lot of what he stands for,
but I don't think that you have really good evidence
and I think this is all retaliation
for the strike you organized.
So I'm not gonna deport him.
And you might say, well,
what did this lady have to do with deporting?
Apparently back in the day,
the power of immigration or control of immigration
was up to the Department of Labor.
So the Secretary of Labor was also in charge of immigration,
which really kind of gives you an idea
of where America's immigration policies,
you know, where their mind was at,
that it was about importing, you know,
good workers or also controlling who came in
to keep competition for jobs down.
Totally.
But so she was in charge of immigration,
which as we'll see later on, she used to great effect.
Is that our little,
is that our cherry on top at the end?
Yeah, I think so.
Okay, that's a good idea.
It's the kid with the last question in Q and A.
Oh man, and not the drunk guy.
I hate that guy.
So when FDR passed away in 1945,
she was the longest serving labor secretary
and one of only two cabinet members
to serve the entire length of his super, super long presidency.
And she held over into Truman as well.
He was like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So you're welcome to stay,
which you don't see a lot of that anymore.
Yeah.
She published a biography, a bestseller about FDR
called The Roosevelt I Knew.
And here are a few other sort of career feathers in her cap.
She was the head of the American delegation
to the International Labor Organization in Paris.
Truman appointed her to the US Civil Service Commission,
which was a position she held till 1953.
And she basically accomplished every single one of her goals
while she was secretary of labor,
except for one thing she went in there wanting to do,
which was universal access to healthcare.
Yeah, which is kind of a bummer.
Some people might say it's a bummer.
Some people might say, good.
Sure.
She also played drums for docking for a brief time.
For a little bit.
She did it all.
And all while wearing a frumpy tricornered hat.
That's right.
And then after that,
she did what a lot of people in public policy do.
She went on to teach and lecture
at the New York State School of Industrial
and Labor Relations at Cornell University.
She did that till she was 85 years old
when she passed away in 1965.
Yes.
There were a couple of other things to throw into.
Both her husband and her daughter suffered
from what we today call bipolar disorder.
She cared for them their entire lives.
That little thing.
Yeah, right.
Can you imagine?
No, while she's doing all this other stuff,
she made sure that they were cared for,
took care of them directly herself.
And one of the other things I think is worth mentioning too,
that before FDR became president
while she was working in New York,
she was already known publicly
before she became Secretary of Labor
because she was the first public official
to call Hoover out on his BS
when he was downplaying joblessness numbers
and unemployment figures and just general
terrible economic news
and pretending things were way better than they were.
She was the first person to step up
and publicly contradict him
and made national news for that.
And again, this is a woman doing this in like 1930.
So just that alone makes national news
but she was also calling him out on his BS.
And one thing that we have to say
before you finish with the cherry on top, Chuck
is she had guys figured out.
She had a folder called notes on the male mind
and she would just take notes on guys
and men that she worked with
and just kind of try to get an understanding of them.
And she realized that the way to get male colleagues
to treat you normally or maybe even respect to you
is to remind them of their mother.
That's what it takes apparently to get a guy
to treat a woman with respect at work.
Well, and you know, we mentioned why she's under song there.
You know, history is written by men.
We all know this
and a lot of those New Deal histories
in the 70s and 80s didn't even mention her
which is just staggering
that you can write a history of the New Deal
and not mention Francis Perkins.
It's just like a black eye on any author
that did something like that.
It almost seems malicious in a weird way.
Like I like to think that that's not the case
but what other explanation is there?
It's nuts.
It's weird.
So the cherry on top here at the end is World War II.
She, World War II was not a cherry on top
but she was watching Hitler do his thing in Germany
and got really worried.
She's like, man, that guy's cranked up.
She was read about anti-Semitism
and everything that was going on with the violence there
and she wanted to help German refugees escape.
And at the time the Coolidge administration
and the immigration laws that came through his administration
were really tough
and Americans were very fearful
that relaxing these laws
would increase the job competition
and that Americans weren't gonna have these jobs.
And she said, you know what?
I don't agree the immigration services
under the Department of Labor.
And so I am going to put some quotas down
to get some of these refugees here and to aid them.
And she did that to great success.
Yeah, she made sure that about at least 55,000
Jewish German immigrants made their way
into the United States
through these Department of Labor immigration quotas.
And another, I think 200,000 people in general
were rescued from Europe
as World War II was starting to develop over there
because of her.
Just on top of everything else,
she also saved a bunch of tens of thousands
of Jewish people from Hitler in World War II.
Amazing.
Amazing, Chuck.
I guess that's it for Francis Perkins, huh?
That's it.
Well, if you want to know more about Francis Perkins,
go start reading about her
because there's even more detail to her life
than we captured here.
And she's worth reading about.
Very admirable person.
And since I said admirable,
it's time for Listener Mail.
I'm gonna call this Helping a Helper.
And this is from Tony.
Tony says this,
you guys have been sewing face masks
for almost a month now
and I'm close to my 1,000th mask.
Nice.
It's a lot.
I have given and donated to friends, family, co-workers.
I'm a 911 dispatcher, by the way.
Healthcare workers, retail workers,
delivery people, postal workers,
and other essential workers.
And people wearing funny hats.
People wearing funny hats and complete strangers.
Now that face masks have become mandatory here in San Diego,
the need has grown substantially.
And through all of this,
you three have been with me and keeping me company.
It's just about Jerry too.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
She wasn't talking about Tommy Chong,
I'll tell you that.
Old episodes and new have entertained me
through the tedious hours of cutting fabric,
ironing, pinning, and sewing.
I started listening to your podcast
while I was in the Navy
and soon introduced you guys to my husband
who was still in the military.
We have both listened and learned through the years together.
Thank you for continuing your show
and helping the helpers of the world.
Side note, love the 911 dispatcher episode
and thank you for clearing up the pizza order myth.
Second side note,
I wrote my master's thesis
on the use of body worn cameras by law enforcement.
And I decided to focus on that topic
after listening to that awesome episode.
Oh, neat.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
All three of you are thanked
and mentioned in the thesis even.
Oh, that's cool.
When I'm tired and don't want to sew anymore,
I think of this quote from Mr. Rogers.
Head down.
When I was a boy
and I would see scary things in the news,
my mother would say to me,
look for the helpers.
You will always find people who are helping.
Go to them and they will help you.
And that is from Tawny.
And that's a great quote, Tawny.
I'm gonna use that in my own house.
It's kind of like if you're afraid of flying,
watch the flight attendants.
And as long as they're not freaking out, you're fine.
It's the exact same thing.
He's saying when the S goes down,
there's people helping.
So that's always good.
God bless Mr. Rogers and you, Tawny.
Oh, man, man.
Yep, thanks a lot.
Is it Tawny?
Tawny, T-A-W-N-Y.
I couldn't tell if you were just
putting a little mustard on the Tawny.
No, like Tawny Cotain.
Sure, yeah, from the White Snake videos.
That cultural icon.
Well, thanks a lot, Tawny.
I apologize for Chuck calling you Tawny Cotain.
Okay, can I apologize for you, Charles?
Sure.
Okay, well, I'm gonna do that.
If you want to get me to apologize for Charles,
let's see if you can do it.
You can send us an email.
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