Unitarian
Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
“Frances
Perkins (1880-1965), Champion of Workers’ Rights”
a
Labor Day sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
September 6, 2009
Note:
A reading is attached, which you might like to
read first
We build upon the good works of those who have come
before us. Many people say that “Nothing changes. People are no
different now than they were thousands of years ago.” While
many things haven’t changed in
human nature, life for
ordinary people has improved greatly, here and across the developed
world. Here are some of the things that were unheard of 100 years ago:
-
Unemployment benefits
-
Workmen’s compensation
-
Social Security, or old age pension
-
Medical care for the old
-
The vote for women
-
Laws against child labor (children as
young as 5 years old worked in mines and factories)
-
Finally, workplace safety laws (there was
no limit to how many workers you could stuff into small spaces, or
whether there should be fire escapes for multi-story buildings).
The struggle for these rights is the struggle of
our heroine, Frances Perkins. Frances
was born in 1880 on Beacon Hill in
Boston. The family moved many times as their
fortunes rose and fell. They finally settled in Worcester where she
commuted to Mt. Holyoke
College. Frances
didn’t seem to “fit” with her family of origin. They were thoroughly
middleclass and Victorian in their belief that women should stay close
to home and narrow in their politics.
Frances
was raised as a Congregationalist and felt deeply the suffering of
others. She was fascinated about why some people were poor and some rich
and she was appalled at the ill-treatment of immigrant workers. She
was not considered a pretty girl but she was very smart and blessed with
exceptional social skills. She was attracted to the field of social
work, which was in its infancy. This was the time when new immigrants
were pouring into Americas
cities.
At Mount Holyoke College,
Frances
met many young women from wealthy, influential families. She also met
brilliant women who came to lecture. One of them was Florence Kelley,
executive secretary of the
National Consumers League, a group dedicated to abolishing child
labor and eliminating tenement sweatshops. The goal of this League was
to get consumers to understand that “goods bought cheaply often came
with a steep price for workers…. [The League] sought to mobilize
middle-class support for promoting what she called ‘enlightened
standards for workers and honest products for everybody.’” (p. 12,
Downey)
While reading this book, I was astounded to recognize
today’s parallels with the time of Frances Perkins. This is what our
Green Sanctuary movement and other justice seeking efforts are
about—being aware that what we buy
can support the impoverishment of the earth or of low-paid workers.
I have often wondered how, for example, McDonald’s can afford to sell a
burger for $1. I can’t help thinking that if I pay, say, $1.25 or $1.50,
which is still quite cheap, would this raise the salary of this worker?
Since 1999, there have been magazine articles entitled, “The High Cost
of Low Wages.” It is illogical that there should be “the working poor.”
If people work, why should they be poor? Then they have to be subsidized
to have food and shelter. Why not pay them a living wage in the first
place? Do they not have worth and dignity enough for this? (Our
Unitarian Universalist first principle says “Yes!”)
This is what we must ensure: a dignified life for all by first
paying a living wage.
New social science methods were being applied to
America’s economic life. Applied
statistics could prove the case for reform. Florence Kelley’s motto at
the National Consumers League was “investigate, record, agitate.”
Frances
was on fire with the ideal to help those in need. She took to heart the
St. Paul-inspired motto of Mt.
Holyoke: “Be ye steadfast…”
She got a job in Chicago
at a Settlement House; these were houses where idealistic middle and
upper-class young people could live communally while working to improve
life for the poor. Some of the houses offered “job training, health
services, child care, a library, a savings bank…English-language classes
and U.S.
citizenship classes…” (p. 18, Downey) Hundreds of settlement houses like
these sprang up throughout the nation.
Frances
met many influential people here who also challenged her thinking,
particularly about trade unions that organized workers to work for
better wages. It was at this time that
Frances
changed her religion from Congregational to Episcopalian. Again, she
cultivated many influential friendships in this church to which many
wealthy people belonged. She was later to write that she liked the more
mystical and liturgical practices of this church and was to find it
comforting throughout her life.
Frances
decided to return to school to study economics and labor so she could
understand how to more effectively help the poor. It was unheard of for
a woman to attend graduate school. But the Wharton School of Finance and
Commerce at the University of
Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia had just
begun admitting women. It was one thing for a college to become co-ed,
it was quite another for Frances
to be accepted by male students; but her intelligence and fine social
skills won over many of them. Here
Frances
was to meet many influential men who would later help her get into
higher office.
Time for a Labor Day joke or two: The first one is
by Harry S. Truman:
-
It's a recession when
your neighbor loses his job; it's a
depression when you lose
yours.' Harry S. Truman
-
A little boy asked his Dad: "Why is today’s holiday
called Labor Day? Shouldn't
it be called `No-Labor’ Day?"
Francis got a job as a social worker in New
York City
and was able to further her studies at
Columbia
University. Again, she was able to
cultivate connections with the famous Astors, Vanderbilts, and
Roosevelt
families as well as many artists, writers, and intellectuals in
Greenwich Village. It was here one day on March 25, 1911, while having afternoon tea that
Frances
heard fire engines. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was on fire and she
personally witnessed girls throw themselves from windows because they
couldn’t get out of the blaze; the one fire-escape had collapsed. In
all, 146 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian women died that day.
(How interesting that Jewish women are described by their religion,
not their ethnic background!)
In the weeks that followed, 20,000 women streamed into the streets
protesting working conditions and low wages. This is what inspired the
hymn we just sang—Bread and Roses,
how poetic and how sad. And yet the juxtaposition of “Bread” and “Roses”
must have caught at the hearts who felt that life is about more than
labor, so let us have a just wage and working conditions first.
This was the era of an extremely corrupt City Hall,
called Tammany Hall. Frances
soon learned that even corrupt politicians can lend real help for their
constituents if approached properly. She soon learned that even corrupt
men could do good deeds. When some of these men were elected to State
office (and she helped them in this), her opportunities to get social
legislation passed increased remarkably. In those days when Republicans
were in power, it was practically impossible to get any social
legislation passed but deals could be made.
Frances
noticed that politicians would say things to her in confidence because
they trusted a dowdy-looking woman who reminded them of their mother.
Frances
capitalized on this by dressing like an older woman and she began to
lobby in earnest for her causes. You can see in the photo on the cover
of the Order of Service that Frances
didn’t look like the influential socialite she had become. The downside
was that she began to be called in the press “Ma Perkins”, which she
hated. They had previously referred to her as “the perky Miss Perkins.”
In 1912, though she could not vote, she used her
networking skills to garner support for a 54-hour work week for workers.
(That is not a mistake. Many workers worked seven days a week, 12 hours
per day, including children.) There was currently no limit on working
hours. A young New York
politician, Franklin Roosevelt noticed Francis’ ability. He became the
rising star of the Democratic Party. When he was elected Governor of New
York state, he hired Francis to be head of the State Industrial
Commission, a powerful job on a commission that regulated industry.
Later, when he became president in 1933, he would hire her to be the
Secretary of Labor. Roosevelt’s and Frances’ most difficult job was
cleaning up the entirely corrupt Republican Labor Department.
In the reading, you heard that
Frances
accepted the job only if Roosevelt would back her
entire agenda. This fitted anyway with what Roosevelt
called the “Economic Security” programs. In 1934,
Frances
called a National Conference on Economic Security. This was
Frances’ greatest strength: building up
public and political understanding and opinion on new programs.
The economic conditions the Democrats inherited in these
Depression years were eerily similar to the economic crash of the last
few years. Banks had made foolish loans to people to would be unlikely
to pay. They made interest-only loans with balloon payments due in a few
years with assurances that there would be plenty of refinancing then as
property prices rose. People made lots of money on the Stock Market but
there was widespread fraud. When the whole thing unraveled, the
Republican Hoover government was paralyzed and offered no solutions.
Corruption had literally brought the economy to a halt, just as it would
have at the end of last year if the bail-out had not occurred.
A physician, “Dr. Francis Townsend, who worked for the health
department of Long Beach,
California, looked out the window one day and
saw three elderly women rummaging in a garbage can for discarded food.”
(p.230, Downey) He bellowed
in fury at this sight. He began a grassroots political movement to urge
the federal government to provide social security for seniors. This gave
impetus to Frances’
plan. She looked to Europe for examples of how a
plan might work. She found that it required a huge amount of record
keeping and the British had warehouses full of records.
Roosevelt
directed Francis to have a new company by the name of IBM (International
Business Machines) to see whether they could mechanize record keeping!
Frances’
programs of social security, unemployment benefits, and workmen’s
compensation were finally passed, mostly because these would all pump
money back into the economy and people would definitely spend it in
order to live. Add to this the Public Works programs and things were
beginning to look a bit hopeful. Roosevelt
was against just hand-outs. He wanted people to work for what they got
and develop skills along the way.
By 1936, Frances
could report that nearly 1 million people were receiving benefits.
Nearly three-quarters were elderly people and the rest were dependent
children and blind people. (p. 244, Downey)
The one thing that had been dropped from the economic security
plan was national health insurance. This was the one thing that might
have helped her personally for Frances had a brilliant but mentally ill
husband and a mentally ill daughter and it had taken up all her
emotional and financial resources (and those of her friends as well) to
support them and buy care for them.
This is the story of an able woman committed to making the world
a much more just place for everyone. She saw that while some of the
states were progressive and leading even the federal governments in
workplace reforms, others, especially the southern states, were unlikely
to embrace reform without federal intervention. Companies that didn’t
want to comply simply moved across state lines. (This also happens
today.) Others have continued her work, albeit at a far slower pace.
Now that I know about her, every Labor Day, I’ll light a candle
for Francis Perkins, Labor Secretary par excellence and for the spirit
of justice in the workplace that she exemplified. She’s a good model for
justice-seeking UUs to follow.
A Reading
from:
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances
Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
by Kirstin
Downey
On a chilly February night in 1933, a middle-aged woman
waited expectantly to meet with her employer at his residence on
East 65th Street in
New York City. She clutched a scrap of paper with
hastily written notes….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 the courts, business, labor
unions, conservatives….The man sat across from her in his
wheelchair…Soon, he would head to Washington, D.C. to be sworn in as the
thirty-second president of the United States. He would inherit the worst
economic crisis in the nation’s history….His choice of labor secretary
would be one of his most important early decisions. His nominee must
understand economic and employment issues, but be equally effective as a
coalition builder….
But placing a woman in the labor secretary’s job would expose him
to criticism and ridicule. Her list of proposals would stir heated
opposition, even among his loyal supporters. The eight-hour day was a
standard plank of the Socialist Party; unemployment insurance seemed
laughably improbable; direct aid to the unemployed would threaten his
campaign pledge of a balanced budget.
He said he would back her.
It was a job she had prepared for all her life….
The next day she called Franklin Roosevelt and accepted the
offer. Frances Perkins would become the nation’s first female secretary
of labor.
(pp.
1-3, Prologue)
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox
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