We Owe Social Security to a Woman

By Jan Erickson, Government Relations Director

August 19, 2005

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is generally credited with giving us the much-revered Social Security program. Roosevelt signed legislation creating this pioneering retirement, disability and life insurance program 70 years ago on August 14, 1935. But not so well-known is the fact that a woman, Frances Perkins [1882-1965], the first woman cabinet member and secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945, was instrumental in designing the proposal and rounding up congressional support.

Born in Boston, Mass., and a 1902 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Perkins was trained as a teacher and taught and lectured throughout her long career. Her early exposure to difficult and dangerous factory work, and witnessing the horrendous Triangle Shirt Waist Company fire that killed 146 women in 1911, led Perkins to a lifetime of advocacy for women and the working poor. She was an unabashed feminist, speaking out for and organizing women politically. And she was an unparalleled activist who led her party and the country out of one of our nation's most troubling times.

When FDR became governor of New York in 1929, he made Frances Perkins his chief labor officer, whereupon she promoted a policy of unemployment insurance - one of the first such efforts in the U.S. Later, when Roosevelt was elected president, he named Perkins to chair the Committee on Economic Security, with a mandate in 1934 to produce a comprehensive plan for unemployment, old-age and health insurance. Remember that 1934 marked the depths of the Depression, when mass unemployment was the country's foremost problem.

Within six months, the committee was successful in preparing recommendations for unemployment insurance and for old-age insurance, but not for health insurance - because as Perkins put it, the "experts couldn't get through with health insurance in time to make a report on it." Perkins campaigned for Social Security in Congress until its passage and when FDR signed the Social Security Act, Perkins stood right behind the president. Photographs show this remarkable woman in her characteristic dark dress and hat, with a well-deserved smile of accomplishment.

Perkins was the longest serving labor secretary and later served as a federal civil service commissioner. She continued her public life speaking and writing and was the author of two books. A wonderful, but short, biography of this remarkable woman appears on the website of the Social Security Administration which also contains a selection of quotes from her many speeches.