Now this is a self selecting crowd. I know some of you already know who Frances Perkins is, but a lot of people dont. So, lets start by asking this question. How many of you know who Frances Perkins is . Oh, yes. This is great. Good, good, good. How about this . How many of you know someone on Social Security . Please raise your hand. How many of you know someone who is receiving Unemployment Insurance or who has ever received Unemployment Compensation . How many of you know someone working a 40hour week . More or less. Frances pirngs work. How many of you know a 12yearold who has quit going to school so she can work fulltime in a factory . Frances perkins work, her ban on child labor enacted in the fair standards act made it possible to keep kids in School Longer instead of in mills and factories. Its awfully noisy here. I want to talk more so you know about the breadth of Frances Perkins accomplishments. A middleaged woman waited expectantly to meet with her employer at his residence in new york street. She clutch aid scrap of paper with hastily written notes. Ushered into his study, the woman brushed aside her nervousness and spoke confidently. They ban tered casually for a whi while, as was their style. Then she turned serious, her dark, luminous eyes holding her gaze. He wanted her to take an assignment but she decided she wouldnt accept it unless he would allow her to do it her own way. She held up the piece of paper in her happened and he motioned for her to continue. She ticked off the items, 40hour workweek, minimum wage, workers compensation, Unemployment Compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized Public Employment service and Health Insurance. She watched his eyes to make sure he was paying attention and understood the implications at each demand. She braced for his response, knowing that he often chose political expediency over idealism and was capable of callousness, even cruelty. The scope of her list was breathtaking. She was proposing a fundamental and radical restructuring of American Society with enactment of historic social welfare and labor laws, to succeed she would have to overcome opposition from courts, business, labor unions, conservatives. Nothing like this has ever been done before in the United States, she said. You know that, dont you . The man sat across from her in his wheelchair amid boxes and rumpled rugs. Soon he would head to washington, d. C. To be sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States. He would inherit the worst economic crisis in the nations history. An era of rampant speculation had come to an end. The stock market had collapsed, rendering investments valueless. Banks were shutting down, sweeping people of their lifetime savings. About a third of workers were unemployed. Wages were falling. Hundreds of thousands were homeless. Real estate prices had plummeted and millions of homeowners faced foreclosure. His choice of labor secretary would be one of his most important early decisions. His nominee must understand economic employment issues, but be equally effective as a coalition builder. He was a handsome man and studied the plain, matronly woman sitting before him. No one was more qualified for the job. She knew as much as labor law than anyone in the country. He had known her for 20 years, the last four in albany, where she had worked by his side. He trusted her and knew she would never betray him. None of the items i just mentioned were part of the fdrs Campaign Platform in 1932. Nevertheless, he told Frances Perkins he would back her. And she agreed to accept the job. That night in bed she actually cried in deep, wailing sobs because she knew it was going to be such a difficult job. She would open herself to Constant Media scrutiny, harsh judgment but knew she must accept the offer. As her grandmother had told her, whenever a door opened to you, you had no choice but to walk through it. Frances perkins would become the nations first female secretary of labor. The Social Security act passed in 1935, gave us Unemployment Insurance, Social Security and our welfare system known as aid to dependent children designed to help the children of parents, of mothers left to raise their children alone. The fair labor standards act passed in 1938 set that 40hour workweek. It put the ban on child labor. Other things she did, fha insurance. She was the primary booster of the civilian conservation corps, the largest single supporter of the wpa. Truly this was a really remarkable woman. Now, its a little interesting and unusual that i came to write this book. I came from a staunchly republican family. I actually came from a family of roosevelt haters. But when i came to washington, d. C. In 1988 as a young business reporter, one of the first things i did as i learned my way around town was a trolley bus. And the first thing i notice was the Frances Perkins department of labor. As those of you who live in washington know, theres very few buildings in washington named after women. So i noticed it and filed it away and wondered who was Frances Perkins . I had never even heard of her. As we went around in the trolley bus on this day i took the tour, we got by the Washington Monument and the tour bus driver said in his along with his regular pattern, what American Woman had the worst childbirth experience. Theres a long pause. Frances perkins. She spent 12 years in labor. Thats the first time i ever remember hearing Frances Perkins name spoken allowed. Now i laughed, like the rest of you did, but it is also, as a feminist, kind of irritated me. I kept her name in my mind and i kept listening for her i spent 20 years at the Washington Post and realized how often i heard her name, often like a sort of a distant whisper when we talk about Social Security, Frances Perkins. We talked about age discrimination, Frances Perkins. When we talked about the fair labor standards act and making revisions to it, we talked about Frances Perkins. When we talked about the Labor Movement, we talk were talking about Frances Perkins. This was all her handy work. Quite an extraordinary record of achievement. I spent 20 years at the Washington Post. I went all over the country for the Washington Post. It was a wonderful Life Education going to visit places and learn new things. As i traveled around the country, writing business stories, i began to realize how little i knew about the history of the working people of america. Its something that really isnt taught. In the late 1990s i wrote a series of articles on Sexual Harassment and i heard a lot of chilling stories about places where there had been an imbalance of power, where people were able to use their power to force people to do things they didnt want to do. There were people who were sort of trapped in a cycle of abuse. And a lot of times, the stories were really very bad stories. Its really much more akin to criminal activity than most of us have realized. And i heard all these stories all around the country. And i began to suffer myself with what psychologists call secondary stress. And i got afraid to fly. I started to feel like Authority Figures couldnt be counted on to do the right thing if there were a problem. I suppose part of the issue for me is that i had the good luck and bad luck to sit by the post fabulous aviation reporter don phillips, and he was writing about every plane crash that happened in america. So every day, and i was afraid to fly, i was overhearing him talk about every air accident had happened and just how the people on board had died. So i started to travel to places by train, whenever i could get away with it. I took a long trip out west to do a story on the national parks, and on the way i read tony lucas book big trouble, a fabulous book about the great labor battles of 100 years ago. And i was shocked to realize that actually these were pitched battles. This was almost like war fare out on the western frontier between employers and workers and i realized how little i knew about that. So i began looking for a vehicle to write about the epic struggle of the working man in america to get a better life. I came back to the post and started to write a column called on the job where people could write me letters about their problems at work. One day a man wrote me and said at the end of the day, every day, were locked into our offices while they count the money in the cash register. Do you think thats unsafe . Yes, it is. Even a rat has an escape hole, he told me. So i decided to write a column on workplace fire safety. And in doing it, i did a little bit of research on the triangle fire and learned a young social worker named Frances Perkins had actually witnessed the fire. And what she had seen had so horrified her, 146 people died that day, many leaping to their deaths from a building in lower manhattan. It was a sweat shop. From that experience, Frances Perkins was so motivated to make changes that she drafted the laws that became our National Fire safety act. You might say eureka. At that point, i felt this is a woman who has a fabulous story. It has to be told. This aspect of labor history is something that is not told very much at all in america. And by telling the story of Frances Perkins life, i saw an opportunity to do it. Today, in the various tents, youll hear a lot about political history, military history, civil rights history, but except for me today, youll hear very little about labor history. And my book has tried to rectify that. I got a contract to write the book. I began doing the research when i got a fellowship at harvard university. I was a nieman fellow at harvard. At harvard at that time there was not a single professor of labor history. At this point now theres only one major newspaper that employs a fulltime labor reporter. Thats the new york times, and its steven greenhouse, and he has a lonely job. Now, many people advocate hardily for free trade today but there arent a lot of people speaking up for the events of the working people in america. Frances perkins devoted her life to talking about the problems of working people and trying to find ways to solve those problems, ways that could also keep americas businesses strong and prosperous. Now, if Frances Perkins were standing here today, i can almost aassuredassuredly tell y do we think she would be talking about . She would be talking about jobs today, how to generate jobs and how to bring goodpaying jobs back to america. She would be talking about smart employers who are finding ways to grow their workforces, economic policies that bring goodpaying jobs back to america. And she would be talking about ways to strengthen the Labor Movement today so that workers can protect their pensions, their right to a 40hour workweek and their right to Health Insurance that actually works when its supposed to. Now, the Labor Movement, the working people of america, theyre the backbone of america and theyre much of the source of our countrys economic prosperity. But nobody talks about them very much at all. Nobody at all. And thats alarming, especially when we face an economic crisis, as we do today. This is a matter of particular interest to me, because i spent a lifetime studying the American Economy and the Unemployment Rate is really becoming a very serious problem for the United States. We need to get people employed with jobs that earn enough money to give them Financial Security and allow them to buy the things they need. Food and housing and health care. I think of Frances Perkins was here today, and i think i have the right to say it. I spent nine years studying her life. I think she would say, we need to pay a lot more attention again to the working man. And im open for questions. [ applause ] i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how Frances Perkins, in an era when there were essentially no other women in high, political positions, was able to navigate with the other political players in washington. Thats right. Could everyone hear the question . Okay. Its a really good question. And i think thats part of what fascinated me. She essentially had to invent the role of a woman in high public office. She had to figure out how she was going to dress, how she was going to talk, even what she was going to call herself. N now, in some ways this caused her some embarrassment, because early on when she started, someone said that she should be called madam secretary. Now, she sort of went along with it, but she didnt realize after that, she would begin to be called the madam, which made her very embarrassed. She was quite the victorian, and she never liked that. She did find herself in the position of inventing everything about herself. She tried to be very careful how she spoke. She tried to speak as men do. She tried to keep her sentences short and to the point, and she tried to make sure that the men never felt like she was stealing the limelight from them. Now, this was very important that she always let fdr shine, and that was part of the secret of her success. But, in fact, every single day of her life she had to think about those gender issues of how exactly things were going to play out. It was very difficult. In fact, she did find washington to be just as frightening of a place as she feared. Could you expand a little more on the relationship between Frances Perkins and fdr . Frances perkins was, i believe, fdrs closest friend. Now its funny because a lot of other men played poker with him, hung out with him, helped him a lot. Louie howell, harry hopkins, henry morganthal. These were all devoted friends. Across the years, Frances Perkins first met fdr in 1910 when she became his secretary of labor, she had already known him 22 years. And he kept her by his side for the entire length of his presidency, the 12 years in labor that i mentioned earlier. The whole time of his presidency. In fact, she tried to resign repeatedly. She really hated life in washington, found it very difficult, but he could never let her go. And, in fact, when she tried to resign in 1944, she was exhausted. She wanted to go home to new york. He actually reached his arms up to her, put his arms around her and said please dont go. Frances, how can you be so selfish . And she stayed. Were there any initiatives, progressive initiatives that fdr pushed back on or didnt fully implement . Right. Thats a really good question. In fact, the debate is raging right now in washington as we speak. Frances perkins had presented fdr with a list of about ten items that i mentioned to you at the beginning when i was reading the prologue. The only one she didnt accomplish was national Health Insurance. In fact, the American Medical Association told roosevelt and Frances Perkins that they would kill Social Security to prevent what they called socialized medicine from taking root in america. What we ended up with was a Health Insurance system that grew accidentally. It was a reaction to the wage in price controls during world war ii. Companies were not allowed to raise wages, but they really wanted to attract workers. They began to offer Health Insurance. We ended up with a Health Insurance system that was targeted to the strong and healthy, not to the sick and jobless. The program Frances Perkins wanted would have looked more like medicaid looks today. A program that would targeted to people who dont have money to pay for health care. She was never able to get that accomplished. Fdr abandoned national Health Insurance to get Social Security enacted. Every two or three years she would bring it up again and say isnt it time now to get national Health Insurance and each time someone would tell her, no, no, too much of a hot potato. Were not going to touch that one now. Her very last communications with fdr were please dont Forget National Health Insurance. [ applause ] thank you so much for your work on her. I was deeply grateful to you for having done that. As a feminist acres minor suggestion. Im sensitive to the working man and would invite you to say working men and women, but that aside, i wonder if you could talk a little bit about what in her childhood might have foretold this deep sympathy to the working people and to those who are kind of left out . Right. Frances perkins was a very devout christian. She was an episcopalian and had an enormously deep empathy for the human condition. She was interested in the plight of immigrants, interested in the plight of workers. She often said she felt peoples pain. She became fascinated in the American Economy. She studied business. She was very interested in businessmen and how they businessmen and women. Primarily at that time businessmen, and how they conducted their business, and how workers played in making those businesses prosperous. She wanted to see a better balance of power between Business Owners and workers. That became her lifetime crusade. She had an enormous number of interests. She was a very big suffrage activist. She was a Birth Control supporter, too. But she chose the one particular issue, which was worker rights. She made that her lifetime cause and that seemed to all gelled for her after seeing the horror of the triangle shirt ways fire. Relations with organized labor, the unions and that . Yes. Fascinating relationship between Frances Perkins and organized labor. They were mad as hell when she was made secretary of labor. Most unions at that time didnt permit women to be members at all. And a lot of the men who were the heads of the labor unions had hoped to be labor secretary themselves. So, they were personally resentful. And they were also resentful that a social worker was the one who would be leading the department of labor. Over time, though, they saw she was their most stalwart supporter and the things she did enabled the Labor Movement to grow dramatically in the next 20 years. Fdr and Frances Perkins didnt pull the United States out of the great depression. The capitalist system eventually recovered after the big employment push of world war ii, but the Labor Movement was the huge beneficiary of this growth, with protective labor laws in place, we had an Enormous Growth of the middle class in america. And the country became the prosperous place that it was in the 50s and 60s. And thats been the base of our countrys great global wealth. Good morning. You mentioned she was a strong supporter of the wpa. Yes. And im wondering if she had friendships with louis hein and dorothy lang, photographers. Well, Frances Perkins was less immediately involved in the wpa and the public works projects. What she did is lobby for the funding that allowed those programs to happen. She was the reason that any of those things actually happened. And, in fact, she has a wonderful story. When she went to the white house and battled fdr to keep those programs in place, the money for all the various programs. And, in fact, david taylor will be speaking after me. He will be talking about the Authors Program that was part of the new deal at that time, and Frances Perkins was the biggest single advocate of that. Hi. I just have a question about the programs created on the programs that he pushed forward . Im sorry. Her top priority. What was her top priority . Her top priority. Her top priority was enacting Social Security and that was her biggest Single Source of pride in her entire life. She felt it was a program that would last forever and, in fact, theres 50 Million People on Social Security today. Could you comment on her relationship to Eleanor Roosevelt . Frances perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt had an interesting, complicated relationship. They both shared the affection of Franklin Roosevelt in different ways. Eleanor was an enormously valuable Frances Perkins was the one who came up with the ideas and enacted the legislation. Frank lynn roosevelt was the one who had the Political Savvy and popularity to make things happen and eleanor was the one who could popularize these ideas. The two women were friends. They loved each other, as allies of a lifetime do, and they were also fierce rivals and often jealous of each other. At the end of their lives, though, theres a wonderful picture of the two women at the 50th anniversary of the triangle shirt ways fire and their heads are bent in close to each other. And you can see what sincere friendship and affection they had for each other, despite whatever little tiffs they may have had over the years. Yes, thank you very much for writing the book. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you. And i agree with you its an issue that needs to be brought forward now. Do you think that the book brings any new research to the historigraphy of that period . Things that i learned in my research that were probably news to most people was really what a huge role Frances Perkins played in all aspects of the new deal. She had certainly gotten erased out of new deal history. Youll see whole new deal history books taught in colleges that mention her three or four times, five times. Thats extraordinary. I also found out that Teddy Roosevelt was the person who actually first picked her to head the committee on safety after the triangle shirt ways fire. That meant her first important contact was Teddy Roosevelt, not Franklin Roosevelt. I thought that was a really cool find at the library of congress. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ applause ] centers for Disease Control and prevention dr. Robert redfield testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee on the governments coronavirus response. Watch live this morning at 11 00 eastern on cspan3, online at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Tonight on American History tv, a look at the american revolution, beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern with historian, park ranger and author Philip Greenwald on bostons role in the origins of the revolutionary war, followed by discussion of revolutionary war clothing and how american tailors impacted the era. Then the origins of the american revolution. A number of historians offer their thoughts on how it started. Watch American History tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan3. Having lived through a loss of confidence in our institutions, a wave of cynicism that has left us unable to trust what we are told by anyone who calls themselves an expert, it becomes very difficult for us to rise to a challenge like this. Our first reaction is to say no, theyre lying to us. Theyre only in it for themselves. And a lot of our National Institutions have got to take on the challenge of persuading people again that they exist for us, that theyre here for the country. Reporter sunday at noon eastern on in depth, a live conversation with author and American Enterprise scholar yuval levin. His most recent book is a time to build. Others include the great debate and a fractured republic. Watch in depth with yuval levin on book tv on cspan2. Now on American History tv, Cornell College professor Katherine Stewart talks about racial dynamics in the 1930s, an effort to gather narratives from former slaves. We recorded the interview at the historians annual meeting in philadelphia. Catherine stewart, your book long past slavery representing race in the federal writers project. Created specifically art projects to put writers and artists back to work. They created the federal writers project and decided to start collecting exslave testimony. The 1930s was the last opportunity to collect the oral histories of kind of the last generation of americans who