My Faith My Life:A Place for Episcopal Teens and Their Mentors

Frances Perkins¹, Secretary of Labor and the first woman to hold a Cabinet post in the United States, was born Fannie Coralie Perkins in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880. She legally changed her name to Frances Perkins in 1905. As a social reformer, Perkins advocated a variety of liberal causes in the interest of workers, including social security, unemployment compensation, minimum wage and maximum hours, and child welfare legislation. She was on the New York State Industrial Board from 1923 to 1929 and was its chairperson from 1926 to 1929. In 1929, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then governor of New York, appointed her state industrial commissioner. Later, after her appointment as Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor in 1933, Frances Perkins became one of the most important architects of the New Deal program, as well as the 1935 Social Security Act. After President Roosevelt's death, she served on the U.S. Civil Service Commission until 1953.²

Frances Perkins was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts in a comfortable Republican household. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1902, and began a series of part-time teaching and volunteer positions. As a science teacher at Ferry Hall School in Lake Forest, Illinois, Perkins became familiar with Hull House and spent her free time at the settlement in Chicago. At Hull House, Perkins received her first exposure to labor unions, as well as the conditions of the working poor.

After 1907, Frances Perkins served in a variety of labor organi­zations in Pennsylvania and New York. While in New York, in 1911, she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. After the tragedy, she took a position with the Committee of Safety of the City of New York, which monitored the health and safety of workers. She also pursued graduate studies and received an M.A. in economics and sociology from Columbia University in 1910.³

In 1913, Frances Perkins married Paul Caldwell Wilson, an economist. Perkins insisted on keeping her maiden name at the time of her marriage. The couple had one surviving daughter, Susanna Winslow Perkins Wilson in 1916. During the 1920s, Paul Wilson experienced increasing bouts of depression for which he received treatment until his death at home in Washington, D.C. in 1952. Perkins remained devoted to her husband throughout his lifetime, visiting him frequently even when she was Secretary of Labor.⁴

Frances Perkins was sustained throughout her life by her deep religious faith that strengthened her resolve to fight for better condi­tions for working people. Perkins had joined the relatively new congregation, Church of the Holy Spirit, Lake Forest, Illinois, and was confirmed there. Frances Perkins was drawn to the Episcopal Church by its aesthetics, the liturgy, and the rhythm of the liturgical calendar. She also was nourished by a disciplined prayer life, and became a regular retreatant at the All Saints Convent in Catonsville, Maryland. "I have discovered the rule of silence is one of the many beautiful things in the world," she once wrote.⁵ At the convent— where she registered as "Mrs. Wilson"—Frances Perkins would sometimes discuss her work with the mother superior, but mainly went there for spiritual refreshment. She was aware of the tendency for humanitarians to get discouraged in the struggle. However, Frances Perkins believed that the religious basis of her work was integral to her longevity. She did what she did "for Jesus' sake" and not simply as a "humanitarian urge."⁶

In 1948, shortly after she resigned as Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins presented the St. Bede Lectures, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City under the topic of "The Christian in the World." Throughout the lectures, Perkins revealed a theology that was deeply incarnational. For Frances Perkins, God becoming human in Jesus was the organizing principal for her sense of the role of humankind in a Christian society. Further, she saw a Christian society as one that expresses social cooperation through legal, economic, and social relationships.⁷

Notes:
1. The most comprehensive work on Frances Perkins is George Martin’s Madam Secretary: Frances Perkins (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976). Biographical information also provided by Susanna Q. Coggeshall.
2. Martin, parts I&II.
3. Martin, part II & IV
4. Ibid, part III
5. Quoted in Martin, Madame Secretary, 281
6. Ibid, 280=81
7. Frances Perkins, “St. Bede’s Lectures,” 1948, 1:24; 3:36. The St. Bede’s Lectures are located in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library. The texts for these lectures were loaned by Donn Morgan, along with his invaluable insights on the religious life of Frances Perkins.