Way to go, Frances!
If you read my last two blogs, you’ll know I digressed from my book research to my book “publishing.” Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to return to THE TRIANGLE MURDERS.
As mentioned in earlier blogs, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was the worst disaster in NYC before the World Trade Center. Another woman besides Clara Lemlich would get involved and eventually help change the plight of workers. Her name was Frances Perkins and she would eventually become the 4th Secretary of Labor of the United States and the first woman to be appointed to U.S. Cabinet.
On Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, Frances was having tea with Mrs. Gordon Norris at the Norris home, a townhouse near Washington Square. They were interrupted by the wail of sirens and bells of fire engines. As the clamor continued, the two women rushed to the front steps to see what was going on. Crowds of people hurried eastward. They followed and saw smoke rising from behind the NYU law school. Waverly Place was blocked with fire engines. Then they heard the screams.
“People had just begun to jump as we got there,” Perkins would remember years later. “They had been holding on until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer.” Voices around her screamed, “Don’t jump. Help is coming.”
But Frances knew that wasn’t true. She knew the fire ladders were too short, the nets useless. She knew there weren’t enough exits for the workers to get out in time. As executive secretary for the Consumers’ League, an organization dedicated to the improving working conditions, Frances knew about fire safety. And she knew that New York factories were extremely vulnerable.
At the time of the Triangle fire, Frances Perkins was only thirty years old, but this tragedy would change her life forever. More than twenty years later, as a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frances helped join the labor movement and the New Deal coalition. With the Social Security Act, she established unemployment benefits, pensions for many uncovered elderly Americans, and welfare for the poorest Americans. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act, she established the first minimum wage and overtime laws for American workers and defined the standard forty-hour work week. Frances was also largely responsible for federal laws regulating child labor.
An interesting side note. Although Frances died in 1965, she was the target of political opposition as recently as 2012. In her parents’ native state of Maine, she is depicted in a mural displayed in the Maine Department of Labor headquarters. On March 23, 2011, Maine’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, ordered removal of the mural, saying they received complaints about the mural from state business officials that it was reminiscent of “communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses.” LePage also ordered that the names of seven conference rooms in the state department of labor be changed, including one named after Perkins.
On April 1, 2011, a federal lawsuit had been filed in U.S. District Court seeking “to confirm the mural’s current location, ensure that the artwork is adequately preserved, and ultimately to restore it to the Department of Labor’s lobby in Augusta.” However, according to the article below, a federal judge, ruled in favor of the governor. Appeals will be filed.
See the mural in question on this site:
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/03/23/politics/federal-judge-rules-for-lepage-in-lawsuit-over-mural-removal/