September 5, 2021 - by Heather Cox Richardson - Letters From An American

You might also like

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 5

9/6/21, 10:35 AM September 5, 2021 - by Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

Letters from an American SubscribeLog in

September 5, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson 2 hr ago 263 32
On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington
Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and people screaming. They rushed
out to the street to see what the trouble was. A fire had broken out in a garment factory on
the upper floors of a building on Washington Square, and the blaze ripped through the lint
in the air. The only way out was down the elevator, which had been abandoned at the base
of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof. But the factory owner had locked the roof exit
that day because, he later testified, he was worried some of his workers might steal some of
the blouses they were making. 

“The people had just begun to jump when we got there,” Perkins later recalled. “They had
been holding until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind
them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were
trying to get out this thing that the firemen carry with them, a net to catch people if they do
jump, the[y] were trying to get that out and they couldn’t wait any longer. They began to
jump. The… weight of the bodies was so great, at the speed at which they were traveling
that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was
killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.” 

By the time the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was out, 147 young people were dead, either from
their fall from the factory windows or from smoke inhalation. 

Perkins had few illusions about industrial America: she had worked in a settlement house
in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in Chicago and was the head of the New York
office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers to use their buying power to
demand better conditions and wages for workers. But even she was shocked by the scene
she witnessed on March 25.

By the next day, New Yorkers were gathering to talk about what had happened on their
watch. “I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere,” Perkins said.
“It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn't have been. We were
sorry…. We didn't want it that way. We hadn’t intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a
factory. It was a terrible thing for the people of the City of New York and the State of New
York to face.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021 1/5
9/6/21, 10:35 AM September 5, 2021 - by Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

The Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, Al Smith—who would a few
years later go on to four terms as New York governor and become the Democratic
presidential nominee in 1928—went to visit the families of the dead to express his sympathy
and his grief. “It was a human, decent, natural thing to do,” Perkins said, “and it was a sight
he never forgot. It burned it into his mind. He also got to the morgue, I remember, at just
the time when the survivors were being allowed to sort out the dead and see who was theirs
and who could be recognized. He went along with a number of others to the morgue to
support and help, you know, the old father or the sorrowing sister, do her terrible picking
out.”

“This was the kind of shock that we all had,” Perkins remembered. 

The next Sunday, concerned New Yorkers met at the Metropolitan Opera House with the
conviction that “something must be done. We've got to turn this into some kind of victory,
some kind of constructive action….” One man contributed $25,000 to fund citizens’ action to
“make sure that this kind of thing can never happen again.” 

The gathering appointed a committee, which asked the legislature to create a bipartisan
commission to figure out how to improve fire safety in factories. For four years, Frances
Perkins was their chief investigator. 

She later explained that although their mission was to stop factory fires, “we went on and
kept expanding the function of the commission 'till it came to be the report on sanitary
conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions and
then to report all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees,
including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the
overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the
women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for
years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these
subjects.”

And they did. Al Smith was the speaker of the house when they published their report, and
soon would become governor. Much of what the commission recommended became law. 

Perkins later mused that perhaps the new legislation to protect workers had in some way
paid the debt society owed to the young people, dead at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. “The
extent to which this legislation in New York marked a change in American political
attitudes and policies toward social responsibility can scarcely be overrated,” she said. “It
was, I am convinced, a turning point.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021 2/5
9/6/21, 10:35 AM September 5, 2021 - by Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith
appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the
corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers
on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York
governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state’s labor department as the Depression
worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending,
Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the
opposite and said his “misleading statements” were “cruel and irresponsible.” She began to
work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote
employment by working together.

In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover’s plan to let the Depression burn itself out,
President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration.
She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance; health
insurance; old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; and abolition of child
labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think
it can be done?’” 

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment
in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend
$3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than
a million people in 1934. 

In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with
unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to
promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. 

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage
and maximum hours. It banned child labor.

Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle
Shirtwaist Fire into the heart of our nation’s basic social safety net. 

“There is always a large horizon…. There is much to be done,” Perkins said. “It is up to you
to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.”

Happy Labor Day, everyone.

—-

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021 3/5
9/6/21, 10:35 AM September 5, 2021 - by Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

Notes:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1933-02-19/ed-1/seq-23/

https://francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/

https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/lectures/

https://www.ssa.gov/history/perkins5.html

263 32
← Previous

Write a comment…
Arthur Silen 7 min ago
America got wealthy, and a lot of us became smug and callous towards those who were
trapped in low-wage jobs, or face social and economic discrimination at every turn. What
goes around comes around, and a lot of people who should know better are pretending they
are ignorant of our history and values. Utterly shameful and self-defeating.
Reply
Leslie Peltz 1 hr ago
My late husband’s grandmother worked at the Triangle. On the morning of the fire she felt ill
and made the hard decision to stay home. She was a survivor because she didn’t go to work
that day! My great-aunt Rose worked in a factory that made men’s shirts. She was very active
in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union of America. She never married and worked to
support herself until she could retire. She was an important part of my life.
29 Reply
30 more comments…

Ready for more?


Type your email… Subscribe
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021 4/5
9/6/21, 10:35 AM September 5, 2021 - by Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

© 2021 Heather Cox Richardson. See privacy, terms and information collection notice

Publish on Substack
Letters from an American is on Substack – the place for independent writing

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021 5/5

You might also like