Secretary of Labor
When Roosevelt was elected to the White House during the Great Depression, speculation focused heavily on his cabinet choices, specifically Secretary of Labor, as joblessness ran rampant across the country. Though Perkins had served with FDR in New York, her name circulated as a slim possibility. No woman had ever been named to the cabinet, and Perkins told people she considered the offer unlikely. However, behind the scenes Perkins campaigned for the job, speaking at gatherings and conferences about labor issues. Her name began to appear more in newspapers and hundreds of endorsement letters flooded FDR’s office. On February 22, 1933, FDR offered Perkins the role of Secretary of Labor, which Perkins accepted only after the President agreed to support her list of “practical possibilities” to improve the lives of the American people. She became the first female cabinet secretary in U.S. History.
Although Perkins was deeply involved in creating and implementing the Administration’s massive relief and employment programs, she simultaneously worked to reorganize the Department of Labor to make it an effective and efficient government agency. On her first day in the office, she literally and figuratively cleaned up the office of the Secretary of Labor – stopping the destruction of files from past corrupt officials and cleaning up the notorious Bureau of Immigration. She also cleaned up the literal mess that accumulated in the offices, the result of racist policies that required Black workers to eat in their offices, separate from the dining areas of white officials. She noted the size of the roaches in the office to President Kennedy at an event honoring the 50th anniversary of the Department of Labor years later. The team of experts Perkins assembled to run the department was considered by many to be one of the best in Washington.
The progressive legislation and initiatives she helped spearhead ran the gamut from social security, unemployment insurance, public works projects, the U.S. Employment Service, Fair Labor Standards act, child labor laws, minimum wage, a 40 hour work week, and much more.
Perkins noted in 1945 that “These social and economic reforms of the past twelve years will be regarded in the future as a turning point in our national life— a turning from careless neglect of human values and toward an order—of mutual and practical benevolence within a free competitive industrial economy.”
