the woman behind the new deal by kirstin downey

There’s a fair amount of disagreement among historians about who in the New Deal was responsible for which successes.ĭowney makes a persuasive case that Frances Perkins, more than any other single individual, was the driving influence behind the creation and design of both the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Woman behind the New Deal describes how, in the 12 years of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, this extraordinary woman not only overhauled a horribly dysfunctional and gangster-ridden Labor Department bureaucracy from top to bottom ―this was the least of her achievements ―but helped transform the lives of literally hundreds of millions of Americans, a legacy that continues today. She was not someone to be underestimated. (They “delivered loads of explosives in suitcases, bags, even a baby carriage,”ĭowney reports-and some creative maneuvers by Perkins soon fractured the employers’ unity and brought about a strike settlement.)

New York state’s industrial commissioner, she had spoken with angry strikers and persuaded them to give up their stockpiles of dynamite. Missouri campaign rally for the Catholic presidential candidate Al Smith. She had braved a vicious mob of Ku Klux Klansmen at a Some male Labor Department staffers threatened to resign rather than report to a woman.īut as The Woman behind the New Deal vividly recounts, Perkins already had faced much hostility throughout her career. In a splendid new biography of Perkins, The Woman behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirsten Downey writes: Washington position than Perkins did in 1933. It’s a fair guess few had a rougher welcome to a high

When Frances Perkins stepped into her office as labor secretary, the first-ever woman in a presidential Cabinet, her welcoming committee consisted of this:

This blog originally appeared on AFL-CIO Now Blog.

The woman behind the new deal by kirstin downey