The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins

by Kirstin Downey

“Kirstin Downey’s lively, substantive and—dare I say—inspiring new biography of Perkins . . . not only illuminates Perkins’ career but also deepens the known contradictions of Roosevelt’s character.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s closest friends and the first female secretary of labor, Perkins capitalized on the president’s political savvy and popularity to enact most of the Depression-era programs that are today considered essential parts of the country’s social safety network.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Book Club, Biography Memoir

696 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin]

An absorbing biography of the woman who improved factory fire-safety standards after the Triangle Fire, and who, as FDR's Secretary of Labor, put social security, the minimum wage and unemployment insurance on the agenda and pushed them through to a successful conclusion. (She did fail at getting universal health care, but not for lack of trying.)

An extremely important figure of 20th century history, insufficiently remembered today.

[Jean]

What a team Frances Perkins (1880-1965) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) made. Perkins had the ideas and the ambition to accomplish her goals. FDR had the political clout and knowledge to get the job done.

Frances Perkins was the first female cabinet member in American history. She was the Secretary of Labor. She fought into law Section 7 of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. What was the list she told FDR she wanted to accomplish or else she would not take the job? It was as follows: End child labor, a 40-hour work week, minimum wages, unemployment insurance, Social Security, workplace fire safety, improved working conditions and universal or national health care. She accomplished all but the health coverage. FDR also involved her in areas other than labor such as immigration. Perkins was the author of the New Deal.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. I found the book fascinating. It is primarily an academic portrayal of a great legislator and reformer. The author follows Perkins from childhood to death and also touches on some of her ancestors. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and could hardly put it down. The information on the Roosevelts I knew, but most of the information about Perkins was new to me. Some people may not enjoy the academic tenor of the book.

Kristin Downey is a journalist. She shared the 2000 Pulitzer Prize with her group at the Washington Post. I enjoyed reading her 2014 biography, “Isabella The Warrior Queen”.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is almost twenty hours long. Susan Ericksen does an excellent job narrating the book. Ericksen is an actress and multi-award-winning audiobook narrator. Over the years, I have enjoyed listening to her read a wide range of books.

[Dinah]

When FDR asked Frances Perkins to be his Secretary of Labor she came to him with a list of what she wanted to accomplish and let him know that without his support she wouldn't take the job. The list? A 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, worker's compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal child labor law, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized public employment service and health insurance. She accomplished ALL of it except health insurance and we're still working on that one. These are all things we take for granted today.

This woman deserves a statue or three ...really!

Her lack of recognition is partly her own fault; she didn't like reporters and didn't cultivate them. The author, a reporter herself, points out that reporters can shape how history remembers you. She also was a Yankee with a Yankee reticence to reveal much of herself. A mentally ill husband was a skeleton in her closet she didn't care to expose more than necessary and thirdly she had a shrewd habit...after she found the perfect person to head some project she wanted done, she would publicly laud that person for HIS brilliance, foresight and capability.

FDR clearly needed and admired her, yet he abandoned her on numerous occasions. She wasn't blind to FDR's faults and actually had preferred Al Smith, but she was loyal and forbearing of his flaws.

This book is so relevant to the era we are in now and probably should be read for that reason alone. She seemed to regard Labor, Industry and Consumer interests in the same way we regard the balance of powers in government. Each an entity "tainted" with self interest that needs to be balanced against the other two. She seems to have been one of the first to see Consumer rights as part of the equation and she was always trying to even up the balance between the three.

[Drew]

If you don't know who Frances Perkins is, you must read this book by Kirstin Downey. The first female Cabinet member, she was the Secretary of Labor under FDR, from 1933 through 1945. Her ideas and her perseverance created many of the programs that encompassed the New Deal. These included a forty-hour workweek, a minimum wage, worker’s compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, and a revitalized public employment service. The only thing she advocated for that she didn't get was national health insurance, which took until 2010.

I told a friend over dinner recently that I'd never heard of Perkins until 2011, when the Republican Governor of Maine dissed this Maine native and removed a mural that included her and renamed a room that bore her name. I went through grade school, high school and college without ever hearing about her. That is a disgrace. Downey has done the country a great service in resurrecting her name and accomplishments.

What's most impressive is that she did this as a woman in the early 20th century. Reading about the sniping that she had to endure as a strong woman in a national position of power was truly sad. More pathetic is that such discrimination still occurs today and remains the bread and butter of the right. The war on women didn't start today or in the 1930s, but its main proponents were then, and are now, Republicans.

While Perkins had many great attributes, there were a few that I didn't like. Both Perkins and Downey buy wholesale into the Red Scare and the hounding of decent people for thinking differently. They try to justify the un-American assault on freedom of thought but more often they say one guilty person justifies the wholesale character assassinations that occurred. Perkins helped set up loyalty systems and vetting then complained that the media blew the red scare out of proportion. Downey should read Jay Feldman's "Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America."

Perkins also kept quiet about many things, including sexism, racism, and the Holocaust. She and Downey attribute this to her strong New England training to keep quiet, not rock the boat and not embarrass one's boss. In my opinion, leaders need to speak out not embrace outdated codes of conduct. If something is wrong, keeping quiet just perpetuates the problem.

A situation that Downey doesn't comment on is when Perkins is replaced by Lewis B. Schwellenbach as Secretary of Labor under Truman. She complains that Schwellenbach showed up in her office after being sworn in and took it over, regardless of Perkins' last minute scheduled items. Perkins herself did the very same thing when she took over as Secretary of Labor in 1933. The situation is ripe for commentary, but Downey only paints Schwellenbach in a bad light.

Finally, I was put off by the author and Perkins religiousness, especially toward the end of the book. Perkins believe that secularization was bad, claiming that only her god and Christians had people's best interests in mind. She tries to say that the nation was not founded as a secular nation, going so far as to focus more on the 20th century invention of "in god we trust" rather than the founding motto of "e pluribus unum."

As far as the mechanics of the book go, I think Downey should have done another draft or two before publication. The book flow is awkward, jumping back and forth in time as she coves different topics. I felt a little whiplash as each chapter, and sometimes sub-chapters, jerked back to early 1933 before moving ahead to the mid-to-late 30s and then the 40s. Downey also adores her subject, to the detriment of all the other actors. No one is perfect, but in this book you might think Perkins is a god while everyone else is a bumbling fool, devoted acolyte of Perkins or a devious person.

There is a special callousness by both Perkins and Downey to Eleanor Roosevelt. They both ignored the great things that woman did, especially with her work related to the United Nations. They snipe at her and diminish her work, claiming that she only showboated, self-aggrandized and road FDR's coattails, which is so incredibly shallow. They do to Eleanor Roosevelt what they rightfully complain about was done to Perkins while she was a national figure.

Finally, I wasn't happy that the author called her subject by her first name throughout the book, while rarely referring to the other actors, especially the men, by their first names.

Having said all that, I think this is a good book and the topic is something everyone in America should know about. Frances Perkins changed our world and what she did affects every American today.

[Emily]

Kirstin Downey’s The Woman Behind the New Deal offers a fascinating look at Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and the first woman in a U.S. Cabinet. The book dives into her pivotal role in shaping New Deal policies, showing how her moral convictions and drive for workers’ rights influenced much of what we see today. Downey portrays Perkins as a skilled political strategist who stayed true to her values, making this an engaging read for anyone interested in labor history and strong, influential women in politics.

[Daniel Ray]

Thanks to Frances Perkins, a teenaged child could no longer expect to spend its entire life working 70+ hours a week and then when old and all used up, have no pension. She was the first female cabinet member for a president. FDR appointed her to be his Secretary of Labor in 1933. FDR gave her free rein to pursue the Social Security Act of 1935. She fought to get it through the legislature and made it legally unchallengeable because it relied on worker’s contributions. And the Fair Labor Act of 1938 was passed because she changed the mood in Washington. And because the Democrats controlled Congress. But it was her strength and unwavering convictions, more so than FDRs, that led to these changes. She should be given credit and be better remembered. She improved the lives of millions of Americans. The inner circle knew it, but the press and political opponents were often critical of her at the time.

[Caroline]

An adequate portrayal of a remarkable woman. Frances Perkins conceived and spearheaded the enactment of key New Deal initiatives such as the NLRB, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. Before she was FDR’s Labor Secretary she was a revolutionary force in New York politics, again pushing through fundamental social legislation.

[Mikey B.]

From page 126 (my book)
- The Baltimore Sun in 1933 – when Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor
“A woman smarter than a man is something to get on guard about. But a woman smarter than a man and also not afraid of a man, well, good night.”

Evidently Frances Perkins had obstacles to face when she was appointed Secretary of Labor in Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet after he was elected in 1932. She was the first woman to be in the Cabinet (women were only given the vote in 1920). She held this important post for the duration of Roosevelt’s term of office, until he died in 1945.

She accomplished a great deal: a federal law abolishing child labor, a forty hour work week, workers compensation (prior to this if a worker was injured on the job he was on his own), a minimum wage (although this could vary by state), unemployment relief, social security (as in old age pensions). All of these today are sacrosanct. She also tried to introduce universal health care – but the struggle for that goes on to this day!

Also during her tenure the strength of unions and the ability of workers to unionize increased. Frances Perkins wanted workers to have rights – and she passed legislation ensuring this.

This is a great read detailing this woman’s tremendous accomplishments! We follow her upbringing as she came to abandon her staid middle class roots to become more socially involved. She became a social activist in New York City and was very adept at making numerous contacts – among them Franklin Roosevelt when he was Governor of New York.

She took the Labor post at a time when unemployment was 30 percent. The author describes her involvement in many of the New Deal programs.

We also get a personal feel for who Frances Perkins was as the author describes her troubled marriage and family, and also her relationship with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The author humorously compares her relationship with her former boss, Governor of New York Al Smith as being a very straight forward give and take – understanding Franklin Roosevelt’s methodologies was at a totally different level! But we also see how Roosevelt gave great flexibility to his cabinet and staff to get the job done – and this Frances Perkins did. We come away from this book with a greater understanding of how the Roosevelt administration worked.

Frances Perkins wanted to resign several times but Roosevelt refused. She faced opposition not only because she was a woman, but as is inevitable in a long political tenure, she made enemies – but this never stopped her from pursuing her social legislation for the working people.

I do take issue with the author during the Truman administration when Frances was appointed to the Civil Service Commission and started to investigate communist infiltration in government. If one had been a communist sympathizer or party member the Civil Service Commission could remove you from your post. This just seemed a nefarious advent of the McCarthy witch-hunt era. The author approves of this role, which, to me, seems a contradiction of Frances Perkins prior Labor post of giving more rights to workers.

Nevertheless this is a remarkable account of the first woman to hold power in the U.S. government. We are given a view of government working for the people.

[Cynda Reads]

In December 2017 and January 2018, I read Isabella: The Warrior Queen which was also written by Kirstin Downey. That book also was written in a sparklingly, accessible style. Both women's biographies reveal the character and the strengths of the women. What makes this book so different that I rated the Isabella book a 5 and this Perkins book a 4.25? When writing about Frances Perkins, the writer can easily enough write a dateline biography. With Perkins being such a strong woman striving, always striving, to be and do all she can and with Perkins being a leader among women social workers and leaders, too much is going on for the reader--for me--to clearly hold on to at any time. A timeline would have proved valuable in understanding the flow of the life story and where along Perkins doing and accomplishments the reader following.

So what makes Perkins life rather challenging to keep up with? Her education through various colleges, degrees, social work as a young woman, developing and maintaining unlikely social friendships/acquaintanceships many of which helped her further her goals. She started at college trying out and finding her multiple decades'-long professional supportive relationship with her mentor, soon became a part of Jane Addams's social worker group at Hull House. Perkins worked for different agencies, including a long-time part of a Progressive women's health, including nursing and midwifery services for the needy. Perkins married a man who helped her open other political doors, but he would soon and would often manifest bipolarism which ended his career. Now she must be the financial support of her husband and daughter who would also develop bipolarism. (Lithium had been pulled from pharmacology until it was again allowed c 1950.) As the financial support of her small family, Perkins became a political machine of a different sort from Tammany Hall. She could rub elbows with the relatively clean social and money powerhouses along with rather clean politicians along with Tammany Hall and it's rougher types. Whatever happened to Perkins or that she did, she always remained true to her Progressive roots--always.

* Perkins helped in the administration of the visiting nurses and midwife organization. Fatality rates of mothers and babies dropped significantly.

* Perkins played important roles in labor strikes across US during the years of the Great Depression. She developed the dialogic approach to resolution, intuiting that both sides just needed to be heard before they would settle down to negotiation. She often could put into place/fight to put into place the results she had already planned.

* Perkins wrote much of the famous/infamous aspects of the New Deal, from Civil Conservation Corp to Public Works Administration to Social Security Act to Unemployment benefits to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, to Medicaid for Children. And More.

* Perkins sought to have legislation passed that would provide socialized medicine from cradle to grave, but that was blocked. It was a precious dream for her as can be seen in her administrative work in the nurse and midwife organization in New York City.

So how did a woman who was not particularly sexually alluring who was intelligent and educated, competent become so powerful in the first half of 20th century? FDR used Perkins as his consciences. If she wanted something, he whacked her up unfailingly for his the first couple of terms (8ish years) As to why she stopped being so much FDR 's conscience, you too can read the book.

About the Writing Style: Dense, Respectful, Comprehensive, Researched.

What was lacking: The dateline. Would have helped to keep things organized. So organization was weak.

[Carol]

Frances Perkins, born 1880 into an upper-class but no longer well-off Boston family, and she used her connections and her gentility well. An eye-witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, she took an early interest in the welfare of the working class and in the settlement-house movement, supporting nascent labor-union activities in New York, finding her strongest support from Tammany Hall. She knew Franklin Roosevelt fleetingly as a young man, but forged a working alliance during his governorship of New York and served as his well-trusted secretary of labor throughout his presidential administration. When Truman succeeded, the other cabinet members declared that that they simply could not work with a female at the cabinet level, Truman caved in, and she continued in other lesser positions, eventually teaching at Cornell, until her death. I am old enough to remember her name, and, given her strong influence and accomplishments in the labor movement, in getting Social Security and other programs passed, why isn't her name widely known today? She was much more interested in what she could accomplish than in who got the credit. She used her social connections to bring useful people together. She sagely formed alliances with often-neglected wives-and-mothers of politicians. She studied how to manage her bosses, how to approach them, how to act as a go-between for men who didn't want to commit themselves before knowing the other guy's reaction, how to negotiate. She dressed as if she were a generation older than her real age, to look more like a mother than a potential girlfriend. She had the New England habit of not showing emotion and of keeping her private life private, and, sadly, there were reasons: she was supporting a husband who was in and out of mental asylums for severe bipolar disorder and lived to be old, and a daughter similarly afflicted but functioning at a more social level. All this was in the days before mental health was discussed publicly and before health insurance; it drained her financially, as well as emotionally, and that's why she had to work into her 80's. We don't learn, from her own words, how Frances "felt". We wind up admiring her, not necessarily developing a liking for such a reticent person. We'd probably like her if we knew her in person; she was liked and appreciated in her time by those who were not upset by a woman being in power.

[Susan O]

As you might expect, the book is full of political history. From her early days, Frances Perkins was concerned with working people and the poor, settlement houses, factory workers, etc. After the Triangle Factory fire, she became involved in trying to bring about regulations that would ensure worker safety. As Secretary of Labor, she was largely responsible for crafting much of the New Deal legislation. All of these areas were controversial and she was often attacked in the media and by colleagues.

The fact that Perkins was the first woman to hold a Cabinet position, and the only one for the duration of her tenure, meant that the criticism of her took on a particularly nasty form at times. It also meant that she walked a fine line and adjusted everything from the way she dressed to how she interacted with people. It seems that she was loved or hated. The love had to be won, but the hatred was often simply based on her gender.

Perkins and FDR worked together for many years, both before and during his time in the White House, and they were also good friends. She had a difficult personal life and was very religious. All of these things, among others, factor into the type of person she was. Downey does a good job analyzing Perkins's character and supporting this with her actions and interactions with other people.

Downey goes into quite a bit of detail about Perkins's work with labor unions as well as the legislative aspect of the New Deal, as you might expect from the title of the book, but she doesn't neglect the rest of her life. Overall I think her treatment was even-handed, showing us both positive and negative aspects of Perkins's character.

I would recommend it to people interested in early 20th century american history, women's history, or political history. If you don't like reading about politics though, I would steer clear.

[CarolineFromConcord]

The life of Frances Perkins, first female Cabinet member in the US as FDR's Secretary of Labor, is just fascinating. According to many proofs from biographer Kirstin Downey, she was the main person pushing the New Deal. Roosevelt, who was more cautious and political, trusted her and listened to her while many others in his circle came and went. She was unfailingly hardworking and skilled at understanding people and working with everyone, although in her first few months in Washington, she made some missteps that caused her trouble later.

Her career didn't start in Washington, though. She was focused on working people and their needs from college days, taking a teaching job in Chicago and spending all her spare time at Hull House, where she made lasting connections. When she lived in New York City, she was active in the rights of working women and child laborers. Greatly influenced by seeing the appalling Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire after failing to get reforms, she worked harder than ever on workplace safety. She was the right hand of NY Governor Al Smith for some years and then the right hand of FDR when he succeeded Smith as governor.

Perkins had a variety of roles in Washington over several decades but her biggest influence is seen in initiatives that got people working in the Depression and improved workers' rights and workplace safety.

She had to keep working after leaving Washington when Eisenhower and the GOP came in because her husband and daughter were both dependent on her, having serious mental health issues. Author Downey is out of her depth talking about the causes of these medical problems, but that's my only cavil.

I loved how Downey wrote at the book's end: "The secret of Frances's success was that she had done what she did selflessly, without hope of personal gain or public recognition, for those who would come afterward. It was a perpetuation of the Hull House tradition of the old teaching the young how to advocate for the yet unborn.

"It is a great historic irony that Frances is now virtually unknown. Factory and office occupancy codes, fire escapes and other fire-prevention mechanisms are her legacy. About 44 million people collect Social Security checks each month; millions receive unemployment and worker's compensation or the minimum wage; others get to go home after an eight-hour day because of the Fair Labor Standards Act [all of which she shepherded]. Very few know the woman responsible for their benefits."

[Duckoffimreading]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know much about Frances Perkins before reading this book. Immensely under-recognized, Perkins was at the height of influential power during the days of FDR's presidency. Her dedication to social work spilled over into her posting as the first female secretary of labor, where she developed the New Deal, minimum wage, child labor restrictions, unemployment relief and even founded Social Security (while she pushed for universal health insurance, she wasn't successful establishing that). Professionally, Perkins is a woman of immense patience, grace and wisdom. Mountains of emotional intelligence, she was incessantly working behind the scenes to drive consensus, conversations and change. She was thoughtful, strategic and could see into human nature more so than many of her male counterparts of the time. I found myself so frustrated at her constant requirement to prove her worth and position in government - always had people (mostly men) undermining her power. At one point, her job didn't bring her joy anymore and both FDR and Truman called her to keep working in positions she didn't want to do anymore. Why did she do it? She felt that was her duty - ever humble and generous to a fault. On a personal front, she had a very disappointing family life. An adulterous husband who ended up institutionalized for mental health for the balance of his life and an equally mentally ill daughter who found herself in her own disastrous marriage and sadly estranged from her mother. Frances, understandably, poured her life into her job. Ironically, she worked well into late life despite establishing social security. Perkins is an astonishingly influential woman who we don't hear enough about. As far as the writing style of this book, I listened to the audiobook and found the material dry at times. It reads like a textbook, but is ridiculously (sometimes too) thorough. Rating is based on the writing as I think this could have been edited down, but 5 stars for shining a light on Frances Perkins and her enormous contributions.

[Rob Prince]

Poorly written, but even poorly written and schmaltzy at times, the life of Frances Perkins is worth the read. Perkins was the first woman member of a presidential cabinet who served as Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor during the New Deal. In her life she crosses paths with many icons (a few of them actually interesting) of early 20th Century American political and cultural life. She made her career by understanding men in power and sucking up to them. At this she was an expert. She also, had, it seems, genuine principles. A witness of the great Triangle Shirt Factory fire which took the lives of 171 working class women locked in a shirt factory by their pig-capitalist employer. Most of the victims were Italian and E. European Jewish immigrants who jumped to their deaths from the higher floors. Watching flying burning women seemed to make an impression on Perkins who dedicated her life to improving the lot of working and poor Americans.

[Olivia]

Completely fascinating. America has no idea what it owes to Frances Perkins, and it boggles my mind that someone who gave SO MUCH to modern society (fire codes, no child labor, social security, labor unions, unemployment insurance, fair work days, SO MUCH MORE) is completely unknown to most of us. Perkins has always been one of my personal heroes, but this book solidifies her place at the very top. What an incredible, brave, wise, clever, devoted American we had in Frances Perkins. Highly recommended.

[Brenda]

I have just concluded my reading of this remarkable biography of Frances Perkins, first woman to hold high office in our federal government. As Secretary of Labor throughout FDR's presidency, she created and executed much of the legislature of the New Deal. I strongly recommend this highly readable and inspiring book to all woman readers. To help us remember how far we have come and who worked tirelessly to set an example of women's intelligence and skill in a male dominated world. Please read this book!

[Carol]

An illuminating look into one of the most important people in 20th century American history. If you like your eight-hour workday and your Social Security, thank Frances Perkins. But her personal life was not idyllic, she was hated by many in and outside of the Roosevelt Administration, and she had to work until the day she died. Downey did a great job researching and presenting this all-too unknown woman, but I wish for stronger writing, as well, to compliment this complex subject.

[Kathleen Brown]

This was a wonderful biography of Frances Perkins.
“It is a great historic irony that Frances is now virtually unknown. Factory and office occupancy codes, fire escapes and other fire-prevention mechanisms are her legacy. About 44 million people collect Social Security checks each month; millions receive unemployment and worker’s compensation or the minimum wage; others get to go home after an eight-hour day because of the Fair Labour Standards Act. Very few know the name of the woman responsible for their benefits.”
And she did it all in a world that belittled and denigrated women. Fortunately FDR always saw her as the person best suited to be his Secretary of Labor.

[anna]

I need to read more nonfiction because I learned a whole lot reading this - most importantly who Frances Perkins was and all her accomplishments and (probably) least importantly that FDR was away with his mistress when he died. Why weren’t details like that included in history class?

[Elliot Ratzman]

This biography is a dazzling portrait of the power of working “within the system” for systemic change—every activist should read it. Frances Perkins, first female cabinet member under FDR, as Labor Secretary was the essential architect of the New Deal: child labor laws, social security, minimum wage, labor laws, etc. Before she was “Madame Secretary” she had a long career as advocate and policy-crafter, spurred by the Triangle fire (1911) which she witnessed first-hand, she leveraged her considerable networking skills and connections to get worker safety legislation passed. There are lots of lessons here about the limitations of radical vision, the usefulness of corrupt politicians, the petty sins of left-wing actors (Labor leaders, Communist sympathizers), and the virtues of strategic compromise. The portrait hints at, but addresses only in passing, her intense Anglo-Catholicism. A refreshing portrait of a time when there were moral, progressive Republicans and true “bi-partisanship.”

[Julia Kerr]

I am embarrassed to say that I did not know anything about Frances Perkins and her incredible service to America before this book. Frances is responsible for many of the incredibly important workplace safety standards we live with today. From ending child labor, to starting social security and unemployment insurance, to advocating on behalf of WW2 refugees, and fighting sex trafficking, the list of her accomplishments never ends. Kirstin does an incredible job researching and articulating Frances life in an honest and engaging way. I enjoyed so much reading about her and think this book should be a staple in History classes all across America. Definitely looking forward to reading more Kirstin Downey books and spreading the word of Frances Perkins

[Sabrina]

Loved this book. I went in knowing basically nothing about Frances Perkins and came out wondering how she isn’t a household name. Oh right…sexism! So that’s still a thing. And honestly, so many of the battles she fought feel way too familiar today: fear‑mongering about immigration, political polarization, and loud, attention‑grabbing lies meant to sway public opinion. Different decade, same circus.

She’s tough, brilliant, and so deeply New England, something she was proud of and mentioned often. She had that quiet confidence, and the ability to stare down big egos without blinking. Which I freaking love.

Men often blustered, postured, or talked over her, and she’d just… out‑strategize them one way or another. Her ability to find the people who actually got things done (and then make them allies or pawns if they were unscrupulous) was her superpower.

She wasn’t only in the room where it happened, she was often the reason anything happened at all. A total powerhouse wrapped in calm, coastal‑Maine grit. Really glad I read this.

[Andria Kerkof]

I had no idea. Frances Perkins was the first woman to hold a cabinet position (Secretary of Labor) under FDR in the deeps of the Depression. The day Frances went to her first cabinet meeting was the day that my mom was born. Frances Perkins is the reason that child labor laws, 40 hour work week, unemployment insurance and social security are a safety net in this country today. She tried for medical coverage too! When women were criticized for working during the Depression (for "taking" jobs from men), Frances in that cabinet position had to work to support herself and her mentally ill husband and child. When I told my mom (a single parent who raised me) about that, her response "it's just never fair."

[Connor Munro]

Sensational. I cannot believe I knew so little about Frances Perkins beforehand. Cannot recommend enough that anyone with even a passing interest in American or specifically New Deal history read this immediately. What an incredible woman.

[Linda Anderson]

I learned so much about Frances Perkins. Author did a superb job with research and writing in a very clear journalistic style. Themes and events of Frances’ life were focused and discussed well, backed up with lots of details. We need to remember this incredibly brilliant woman who gave us Social Security, 40 hour workweeks, fair labor practices, and so much more. She is a truly hidden figure of our history. Parts of it broke my heart in the ways she was discriminated against. She knew how to get the job done and worked tirelessly to achieve her goals. I’m so glad this was selected for a book club, otherwise I would have not found this wonderful biography.

[Kiki]

This book about the life of Frances Perkins should be required reading. It is a travesty of history and a tragedy that so few people know about this remarkable woman.

[Ray LaManna]

This is an excellent bio of one of the great heroes of the New Deal. Frances Perkins was almost solely responsible for the creation of the Social Security system, unemployment insurance and the minimum wage laws of the US. Downey does a very good job describing her very full life.

[Keith]

Four stars. Frances Perkins is one of my heroes, as she is arguably the greatest social worker who ever lived, and Kirstin Downey's biography is a fine account of an extraordinary life. It is not a perfect book, but it is a necessary one, and Perkins herself is so compelling that the biography's occasional structural looseness barely registers.

Who Frances Perkins Was

Perkins served as Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) from 1933 to 1945 — twelve years, the entire duration of the New Deal and World War Two, the longest tenure of any Cabinet secretary in American history. She was the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet. She came to political life through social work, training at Hull House alongside Jane Addams and working directly with poor and immigrant communities in New York before entering government service.

Perkins was a New Englander, born in Boston in 1880 and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley (about fifteen miles from where I live now in Northampton) graduating in 1902. I have a personal connection to Mount Holyoke: twenty years ago, as a student at Hampshire College, I took classes there through the Five College Consortium, which allowed students at Hampshire, Amherst, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst to cross-register at each other's institutions, including at Mount Holyoke, which at the time admitted only women as degree students. Walking those grounds as an outsider (a man at a women's college, an observer of a tradition not quite my own) gave me some small appreciation for what it meant to move through spaces where you were not the expected presence. Perkins spent her entire career doing exactly that, at a scale I cannot claim to match. The Frances Perkins Center in Maine, where she is buried, maintains an excellent online resource about her life for anyone who wants to go deeper.

Her early career established the foundations of everything that followed. Her work for the National Consumers League in New York “focused on four areas: poor conditions in cellar bakeries, long hours and poor wages for women, child labor, and workplace fire hazards” (p. 53). The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which killed 146 garment workers, many of them young immigrant women, was the defining experience of her political formation. She witnessed it from the street. It made her a legislator.

In those early years she learned two lessons that would shape her entire career. The first was practical: "venal politicians can sometimes be more useful than upstanding reformers" (p. 67). The second was strategic: "the way men were able to accept women in politics was to associate them with motherhood" (p. 76). From that insight she built a deliberate public persona:

"She began to see that her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence, she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers, rather than doing what women usually like to do, which is making themselves more physically attractive to men. She even kept notes on her exchanges with men, including revealing letters that she found humorous, and placed them in a red envelope that she kept with her. She called these observations 'Notes on the Male Mind.'" (p. 76)

Some reporters called her "Mother Perkins" or "Ma Perkins" — nicknames she hated — “but it was the persona she had chosen. She was thirty-three years old” (p. 76).

She is best understood as an idealist who learned to be a pragmatist:

"Her ability to accept human foibles, to see both failings and strengths, was becoming a core personality trait, bolstering her effectiveness. She found that making deals with imperfect people and focusing on their strengths provided a pathway to actually achieving social change." (p. 75)

This is, for me, the most important sentence in the book. We need more people like Perkins today — progressives who will do more than post about their moral purity on social media, who understand that ideological purity without political effectiveness is not idealism but self-indulgence. As I noted in my review of The Power Broker , this is exactly what Perkins understood about Robert Moses: she saw him clearly, named his flaws plainly, and worked around him anyway.

The Economic Context

Roosevelt came to power confronting staggering inequality. As Downey notes, by the early 1930s "2 percent of the population controlled 60 percent of the wealth" (p. 79). Despite the best efforts of people like Roosevelt and Perkins, the disparity is considerably worse in 2026. The top 1 percent of households now own 31.7 percent of all U.S. wealth — the highest share on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989, with the wealthiest 1 percent collectively holding about $55 trillion in assets, roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90 percent of Americans combined. As of June 2026, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. The New Deal narrowed these gaps for a generation. The decades since have reopened them.

In 1901, the Socialist Party platform — considered dangerous by conservatives — included demands that now seem modest: “an eight-hour workday, the right to organize labor unions, free employment offices, and public parks and children's playgrounds” (p. 30). Perkins spent her career turning such "dangerous" ideas into law.

The Mother of Social Security

Downey's central argument is that Perkins was the primary architect of Social Security — not merely a participant in its creation but the driving force behind it. The vision was expansive from the beginning:

"Roosevelt and Frances instead began considering programs far more sweeping than just the unemployment insurance bill. They would initiate a much more expansive version of an 'economic security' package that would cover people from cradle to grave. The concept included not only unemployment insurance... but also old-age pensions, which Frances was eager to promote; health insurance, so people would have medical care, even when they had no money; and financial assistance for the handicapped and for widowed women with children." (p. 347. The emphasis is my own.)

What passed was transformative. What didn't pass — particularly national health insurance — haunts us still. The Social Security Act (SSA) of 1935 established the framework for American social insurance that still exists today, however inadequately. Without Perkins, it is not clear that FDR would have pursued it with the same commitment or the same timeline.

As a social worker who works daily within systems shaped by these decisions, I find it difficult to overstate how much Perkins's accomplishments matter to my professional life and to the lives of the people I serve. Every client I work with who receives disability benefits, unemployment insurance, or retirement income is receiving something that Perkins fought to create. And as Downey's final accounting makes clear, her legacy is almost entirely invisible to those who benefit from it:

"It is a great historic irony that Frances is now virtually unknown. Factory and office occupancy codes, fire escapes and other fire-prevention mechanisms are her legacy. About 44 million people collect Social Security checks each month; millions receive unemployment and worker's compensation or the minimum wage; others get to go home after an eight-hour day because of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Very few know the name of the woman responsible for their benefits." (p. 600)

Gender as Both Obstacle and Asset

The "Notes on the Male Mind" detail captures something essential about Perkins's strategic intelligence. This is not a story of a woman who succeeded by hiding her gender. It is a story of a woman who understood exactly how gender operated in her environment and turned a structural disadvantage into a tactical asset. That kind of self-awareness — the ability to work within constraints you cannot change while working to change them — is precisely what made her effective.

The Unfinished Business: National Health Insurance

The most personally resonant section of the biography for me is Chapter 24, in which Downey describes Perkins's campaign for national health insurance. She argued for it in the 1930s. She nearly got it. She failed.

That failure has never been corrected. As someone who works daily within a private health insurance system that frequently denies or delays care for the people I serve, I find this history not merely interesting but actively painful. Elisabeth Rosenthal's An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back gives a more detailed history of how the United States arrived at its current healthcare catastrophe — a book I plan to review. What Downey adds is the human cost of the road not taken: Perkins herself, in her final years, had spent nearly all of her government earnings on the care of her husband and daughter, both of whom had bipolar disorder (BD). The woman who came closest to giving Americans national health insurance died having been financially destroyed by the absence of it. The irony is almost unbearable.

The Unintended Consequences

Downey also documents an unintended consequence of Perkins's well-intentioned welfare policies. The income support programs she created for single mothers were designed to protect vulnerable women and children from destitution. They have done that. But as Downey notes: "She never guessed that there would later be an explosion of out-of-wedlock births because she had grown up believing the stigma of bearing illegitimate children would far outweigh any economic incentives that were built into the new legislation" (p. 361).

The policy's unintended effects were compounded over time:

"Over the next few decades, however, impoverished women found that they could get more money from the government by having more children while households in which a man was a full-time resident got no aid at all. This perverse policy had been intended to encourage men to seek gainful employment and support their families, but it had the side effect of discouraging marriage in the first place, spurring even more illegitimate babies, and removing adult men from households that needed them." (p. 362)

The data on outcomes for children in single-parent households is real and concerning, though it requires careful reading. The poverty rate among single-parent households with children is 22.2%, more than double the 9.3% rate for married-couple families (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022). The college graduation rate for children of single mothers is 28.1%, compared to 47.9% for children of married mothers (Pew Research Center, 2021). On incarceration specifically: children raised in single-parent households show higher arrest and incarceration rates on average than those raised in two-parent households, with a Princeton University study finding approximately three times the incarceration risk. In the United States, 68% of youth offenders were raised by single mothers, a proportion far exceeding the 23.7% national prevalence of single-mother households (International Journal of Insights and Transformations in Law, Crime and Justice, 2025).

These are not small differences. But (and this is crucial) research consistently finds that once poverty is controlled for, most of the negative health, development, and behavioral differences between children from single- and two-parent households largely disappear. In countries with comprehensive family and social policies, educational outcome differences nearly vanish entirely. This is consistent with my own clinical experience: poverty is a far more significant factor than family structure or race in the negative outcomes I observe. I have worked with men of many racial backgrounds — Black, white, Hispanic, Asian — from working-class and poor economic conditions, who have expressed to me that they genuinely do not see why they are obligated to support children financially when women are legally entitled to work. This is not a racial phenomenon. It is a class and cultural phenomenon, shaped by the absence of the economic and social structures that make responsible fatherhood feel both possible and necessary.

Research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2025 confirms that single parents tend to be less educated, more likely to work in low-income occupations, and more likely to have children before marriage, all factors that increase their poverty risk independently of family structure. Cross-national comparisons show that variation in social policy is the most important factor explaining differences in single-parent poverty rates between countries. Economic instability can also directly cause family dissolution: financial strain on relationships leads to separation, creating single-parent households, which then deepens the poverty that caused the problem in the first place.

This is what Perkins's unintended consequence actually reveals. She passed income support for single mothers in a political environment that made universal healthcare, universal childcare, and a living wage politically impossible. She built one leg of a table that required four. The problems that followed are not evidence that her policy was wrong. They are evidence that her policy was incomplete and that the rest of what she was fighting for was never fully built.

On Journalism and the Historical Record

One of Downey's most pointed observations concerns the role of the press in shaping how history gets written: "reporters write the first rough draft of history, and how they describe events is often how they end up being perceived" (p. 227). In 2026, it is no longer professional journalists (bound by ethical standards and editorial oversight) who most shape public perception. More often it is social media influencers engaging in emotion-driven, algorithm-driven commentary. That Perkins's extraordinary legacy has been nearly erased from public memory is itself a consequence of how history gets told, and who gets to tell it.

Perkins and FDR: A Complex Partnership

Perkins never publicly criticized Roosevelt, even when he did terrible things — most notably the Japanese-American internment of 1942, which she privately opposed but did not speak out against. She also watched FDR transfer immigration enforcement from the Department of Labor, which she ran, to the Department of Justice — a move that limited her ability to protect Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and allowed more people to be turned away than she would have permitted. She was attacked for not doing enough. She was not allowed to do more.

Her relationship with FDR was the central professional relationship of her life, and Downey captures its complexity without romanticizing it. Perkins served a man who was capable of great things and terrible things sometimes simultaneously, and she chose to remain and accomplish what she could rather than resign in protest and accomplish nothing. This is the same calculus I discussed in my review of James MacGregor Burns's The Definitive FDR : the question of what you owe to your principles versus what you owe to the people your work can still help, even from inside an imperfect system.

A Strange Blot

The biography also documents one genuinely strange personal failing: Perkins lied about her age throughout her public career, shaving off two years. She technically worked illegally for the government during the Truman administration after turning 70, because she had falsified her birth date on official records. For a woman of such remarkable moral integrity in almost every other respect, this is an odd footnote — and humanizing in its smallness.

Perkins and Social Work

Frances Perkins came to political life through social work, and she never left it behind. The values that animated Hull House in the 1890s — the direct service to the poor, the insistence that structural problems require structural solutions, the belief that the dignity of every person demands concrete material support — are present in everything she accomplished. The Social Security Act is applied social work at a national scale.

I entered social work because I believed it was possible to help people both individually and structurally. Perkins is the best evidence I know that this belief is not naive. She helped millions of people she never met, through systems she built with imperfect tools in imperfect political conditions, because she understood that the work of social change is never finished and never pure and always worth doing.

[Review continued in the comments section]

[Linda]

There's an odd solace in studying history. The lesson is repeated: There's nothing new under the sun. Or dang little. As far back as the early 1900s, this country was beset by corrupt politicians, negative press, fear of foreigners, abundant sexism, ageism, and under-the-table deals. As a matter of fact, without the under-the-table deals, the wheels of progress often come to a standstill.

In a tousle about immigration law in 1939 that resulted in a move to impeach the first female cabinet member in American history, Perkins realized that much of the anger against her was a result of what some factions thought was "the problem of 'undesireable aliens' (Jews and refugees from Hitler's Europe) who were undermining, even contaminating, the American way of life. That sounds like a page out of this morning's newspaper.

In the 1960s, having refused to answer some questions on the census form, Perkins noted, "They say the records are confidential, ...but I have had to fight to keep confidential documents out of the hands of the FBI and Immigration Service. ...Government has grown and grown and invades more and more areas of our lives. We have to put a stop to that growth somewhere." Didn't Julian Assange say something quite similar?

I'd never heard of Frances Perkins before reading this book. That is a loss to me and to history. She was a remarkably perseptive, self-made woman who navigated the male political sphere as no woman before her had done. She broke the glass cieling before anyone realized there was one. That the cieling magically healed itself after her life was over, is probably because she was that far ahead of the rest the pack of women with political aspirations. She worked tirelessly into her 80s to secure better lives for American workers. She worked for the right to organize, for pensions for the elderly and infirm, for safety and health regulations and fair immigration processes. In short, she worked for all of the things that our current admininstration is gleefully trying to dismantle.

[Mary]

An apparently "dry" subject--Frances Perkins was a remarkable woman and a major social innovator, with political sense, as a close confidante and adviser to FDR. She was responsible for much of the social aspects of the New Deal--Social Security, child labor laws, minimum wage. She had hoped to include health insurance with her package, but realized that to achieve Social Security she had to postpone that issue (80 years!). Downey does a splendid job of fleshing out her subject, although Frances chose to keep most of her personal life private. She married and had a daughter, but within a few years her husband was mentally ill and she had financial and personal responsibilities for him and for her daughter. She was far in advance for a woman of her time, and had the unusual opportunity for highly visible public service as FDR's Secretary of Labor-- yet there were many other women at the time who shared her concern for workers, and especially women and families.

Having lived through these years myself as a school girl and during the war as a college student, I found much I recognized, but at least as much that I hadn't noticed at the time. The applicability to present times is pertinent--she and FDR also faced tremendous battles with conservative and reactionary forces, especially the moneyed class.

I found this the best book I have read this year!