Frances Perkins, photograph by Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C., April 1936. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Frances Perkins, photograph by Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C., April 1936. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Frances Perkins (1880-1965) was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position in federal government. Perkins was profoundly influenced by her many summers at her grandmother’s house outside Damariscotta, Maine, where she learned deep Yankee values such as frugality, tenacity, and self-reliance. She studied economics and sociology at Mount Holyoke College and the University of Pennsylvania, during a time when these were fairly uncommon fields for women. She applied her training in her work as secretary of the National Consumers League, and later as the Industrial Commissioner for New York State and finally as the U.S. Secretary of Labor.