Frances Perkins (1882-1965)The reserved Frances Perkins spoke in the quiet, genteel accent of a proper New Englander. Nevertheless, as Franklin Roosevelt=s secretary of labor and the first woman ever to serve in a cabinet, she managed to hold her own among FDR's dynamic New Dealers. Under her leadership, the Department of Labor became more influential than it had ever been. Among the most personally satisfying moments of her twelve-year tenure there was the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Included in that watershed law was a ban on child labor and provision for a minimum wage, measures that Perkins had advocated ever since her early days as a labor reformer in New York.
On the news of Perkins's cabinet appointment in early 1933, union leader William Green spoke for many when he declared that Alabor can never be reconciled@ to having a woman defend its interests within the new administration. When Time featured this image of Perkins on its cover later that year, however, the gender question was considerably less important. After seeing her standing up for workers= interests on several occasions, Time noted, "Labor was not only reconciled to but jubilant over" this female champion of its cause.
Samuel J. Woolf (1880-1948)
Charcoal on paper, 1933
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution;
gift Time magazine
©Estate of S. J. Woolf
Back to list of portraits
Back to American Women introduction
