Click for Table of Contents never any State or local tax on bonds. So the 6 percent tax-free yield puts as many dollars away for your child’s future as a 12 percent yield from one of your taxable in- vestments. Frances Per 2. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory, which included what is now the States of Louisiana, Ar- kansas, Missouri, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Montana, most of Min- According to Severn, Fanny nesota, and parts of Wyoming and FRANCES PERKINS: A Member of the Cabinet by Bill Sevem; Haw- Coralie Perkins (not Frances) was Colorado. Six percent certificates born in Boston in the spring of totaling $11,250,000 were issued thorn Books, Inc., New York, N.Y.; 1976; 256 pages. 1882. According to Martin, she was to help meet Napoleon Bonaparte’s born 2 years earlier, in 1880. asking price of $15,000,000. MADAM SECRETARY: Frances Frances herself listed 1882 as her Perkins by George Martin; Hough- 3. In just a little over 3 years, you birth date, but Martin says court- ton Mifflin Company, Boston, house records show 1880 and that would have accumulated about Mass.; 1976; 589 pages. $1,200, or enough to foot the bill for “she subtracted 2 years from her a 7-day trip for two to Ireland, air- When you look at the photo- age.” fare, accommodations, breakfasts, graphs of Frances Perkins, she She enjoyed an uneventful child- tours, etc., included. (Price is based seems the embodiment of the New hood, graduated from high school on a package plan, with departure England Yankee-determined, for- in 1898 and entered Mount Holyoke from Baltimore.) bidding, impassive. College, which is generally regarded She was all of that, and more. She as the oldest women’s college in the 4. False. Bonds may be issued in was a gutsy little feminist who had United States. She was popular and one name, in the names of two per- liberated herself from many of so- active in college. In her junior year, sons as coowners or in the name of ciety’s conventions long before Ms. she was elected class vice-president one person with a second person as Steinem and Ms. Abzug were born. and in her senior year, president. beneficiary. And, just maybe, she was yet some- She took an unfeminine interest 5. Cash bonds in after you’ve re- thing else-a hell-bent lady who in science, and when she graduated, tired-in the period during which stepped over the wreckage of a hus- a canning factory offered her a job as an analytical chemist. But her your contributions to the Civil Serv- band and a daughter to sit in a seat of power. father forbade her acceptance be- ice Retirement Fund are being Or-again maybe-she was just cause he believed commercial em- returned to you in the form of ployment was not proper for a monthly payments. It is likely that one of those people who can love respectable young lady. He also re- all of your accrued interest will be the masses easier than individuals. Or maybe something else entirely. fused to pay for any postgraduate offset by tax exemptions and deduc- education, saying that she should tions. Our library has both of the biog- raphies now published on Frances find a suitable young man to marry. 6. b. $186 billion. Perkins. And even after reading This family imbroglio was finally both, it is difficult to bring Frances resolved when she took a job as a 7. No. You’d get back every penny Perkins into focus because she took high school teacher in surbuban you invested-plus interest. great care to keep her private life Chicago in 1904. out of the public eye. And this pri- Severn doesn’t explore Fanny’s 8. $3.75. vacy is one of the problems that relationship with her father, and 9. False. And there’s another ad- confront a biographer. doesn’t even tell us what her father vantage to buying bonds-you’re Martin’s book, Madam Secretary, did for a living. Martin, typically, is less tempted to cash a bond than to succeeds better than Severn’s be- more thorough. He informs us that “raid’ a savings account. cause he had access to her personal her father owned a stationer’s busi- correspondence, did indepth inter- ness and contends, without convinc- 10. False. Bond purchases during views with family and friends, and ing evidence, that Frances and her 1978 exceeded $8 billion, for the took greater care with detail. Not father were on good terms. highest sales since World War II. surprisingly, the better book is also Maybe so. But in Chicago, free of Approximately one out of three more ambiguous about the character her parents, she legally changed her American households now owns sav- of the lady. names to Frances, changed church ings bonds, and more than 16 mil- Both Martin and Severn structure affiliations, and took up with a lion people buy them yearly. 0 their books chronologically. group of idealistic social reformers.

12 OASIS IO-story building. As she looked Regardless, Frances chose to re- up, a screaming girl, hair and cloth- main as Frances Perkins in public ing ablaze, leaped from a ninth-floor life and not use her husband’s name. window and plunged to her death on Remember that this was 19 13, and the pavement below. Frances you can imagine the sensation that watched in shock as others, driven caused. by flames, leaped from the win- “My generation,” she said, “was dows.” perhaps the first that openly and The witnessing of this fire, in actively asserted-at least some of which 146 young women died, com- us did-the separate personal inde- mitted Frances Perkins’ next years pendence in the family relationship.” to a fight for industrial reforms. In Today’s feminists will find inter- the wake of the tragedy, there were esting her remarks from that period, many converts to the cause. Money specifically to a 1914 rally dubbed and politics created a New York by the New York Times as “the first Committee on Safety with some big feminist mass meeting ever held.” names of the time in the forefront. Severn says that “the committee “Feminism means revolution, and One of these was Jane Addams of I am a revolutionist. Z believe in Hull House, and in 1906, against sought advice from the Consumer’s League, for which Frances had been revolution as a principle. It does her father’s wishes, she quit teaching good to everybody.” and became a full-time, unpaid resi- making preliminary studies of fire dent worker at Hull House. Severn hazards.” A year later she was ap- Frances earned as many enemies tells us that her father believed all pointed the committee’s executive as friends with another remark. Sev- poverty was attributable to drinking, secretary, and concurrently loaned ern says “she once half-jokingly said so whatever affection remained be- to the New York State Factory that while many women found that tween father and daughter must Commission as its director of inves- being housewives was a thoroughly have been strained. tigations. rewarding occupation, I’ve never “‘Frances and the commission’s tried it myself.” Hull House led to a paid social investigators took to making sur- work position in Philadelphia be- Through the years of the First prise visits by automobile, arriving World War, Paul Wilson was New tween 1906 and 1909, at which time when and where they were least ex- she was awarded a fellowship to York City Mayor John Mitchel’s pected, driving over back roads, executive secretary, and Frances Columbia University in New York changing their routes of travel. City. She earned her master’s degree Perkins continued her work with Along with all sorts of fire, accident the Committee on Safety , . . and in sociology in 1910 and took a and health hazards, they also un- position as executive secretary of had a daughter, Susanna, after two covered widespread violations of miscarriages. the New York Consumer’s League. the child labor laws.” She lived in Greenwich Village They were at that time a charmed It was this year that the 30- (or couple. Both articulate, politically during this period, dated Sinclair 32-) year old Frances met Paul Lewis, and led a very active life. active, and successful. But there Wilson, a 36-year-old Ivy League were clouds on the horizon. Paul, Frances apparently made it to her economist working for the Bureau late twenties without any great per- after the 1917 defeat of Mitchel, of Municipal Research, “a private . began to show manic-depressive sonal problems, loves, etc. It was organization dedicated to the reform also at this time that one of the symptoms. And his heavy social of city government through scientific drinking became a plunge into the determining events in her life took study.” place. bottle. Worse, he lost what re- The thorn in this romance was mained of a sizable family inheri- Author Severn hits full stride as that Wilson was a Republican and a tance gambling on gold stocks. a writer only in his description of foe of Tammany Hall politicians, the New York Triangle Shirtwaist and Frances was an embryonic By mid-1918, Paul Wilson may Factory fire of 1911. (This event Democrat with close ties to Tam- still have had Frances’ love, but it was the subject of a recent tele- many Hall political bosses. was mixed with a sizable portion of vision movie.) But, as Severn states, “love over- Yankee scorn for his weakness. “Frances Perkins (then 29) was came.” Martin tells it differently, Martin quotes Frances thusly: ‘I saw that I must get more work to do visiting friends at Washington quoting Frances this way: “. . . I in nineteen eighteen. I had to hustle Square in the late afternoon of thought I had better marry nnd get March 25, 1911, when they heard it off my mind because I was always to find things to do that would see clanging fire engines and excited being challenged by someone who us through that crisis because the shouting. Across the square, in thought he should marry me or money . . . had disappeared.” Washington Place, smoke and flames wanted to recommend the institu- Late that year, New York State were billowing from the top of a tion.” elected Al Smith as governor, and

May 1979 13 he appointed her to her first public the evening searching New York’s office as one of five members of the bars and subways for Paul. He was New York State Industrial Commis- found unharmed, but the incident sion. tells much about their marriage. From this point on, both books Much of his life was a succession do a workman-like job of outlining of “attendants,” hospital stays, and a political career that eventually led “disappearances.” to her long tenure as Secretary of The daughter, Susanna, was Labor. And it reads much like the raised in New York by a succes- career of any other successful poli- sion of nurses and nannies. And, tician-Frances Perkins in the right predictably enough, this unusual place at the right time with the familial arrangement earned Fran- right friends. ces a great deal of criticism. Martin, Frances made the most of her op- despite his obvious admiration for portunities, however. In a chapter Frances Perkins, says: “It may be MILDRED ABDUN NUR, Claims Rep- devoted to her role in bringing about that anyone who works long in resentative, Denver (Englewood), Colo. high public office risks becoming WILLIAM ANDERSON, Service Rep- the Social Security Act, Severn says resentative, Andalusia, Ala. that between 1933 and 1935 she defective as a human being.” GERALDINE ARRINGTON, Teletypist, made 200 speeches in support of the Frances did consider resignation Rocky Mount, NC. Act. He also points out that she had more than once, but in the end she HERBERT AUMAN, Claims Examiner, Southeastern PSC. expected that the Social Security stuck with politics until 1945. Al- ROBERT BABISH, Claims Authorizer, Board would operate within the though 65, she did not enjoy retire- Northeastern PSC. Labor Department. ment and a year later, after Roose- JOHN BAUER, Claims Representative, “The House had removed it and velt’s death, Truman appointed her Klamath Falls, Oreg. CATHERINE BEEBY, Secretary, OMA. set it up as a separate agency; the to the Civil Service Commission. LILLIAN BEHRENS, Claims Develop- Senate had restored it to the Labor She accepted, although it was not ment Clerk, Lincoln, Nebr. Department; finally the conference the appointment she wanted. She NATHAN BELLOWS, Operations Super- had decided to keep the board in- had asked Truman to give her a visor, Brooklyn (Flatbush), N.Y. have seat on the Social Security Board CHARLES BENTON, Quality Appraisal dependent. ‘Rather than any Specialist, OQA, Atlanta, Ga. delay,’ Frances said afterward, ‘I because the Social Security Act was ESTHER BERK, Hearing Assistant, readily agreed to an independent “the measure dearest to my heart.” BHA, Newark, N.J. agency. . . . The matter . . . was not LAURA BERTRAM, Operations Super- In her later years, she did visit visor, Burbank, Calif. a major one on which to make a the Social Security Administration’s of AGNES BONSALL, Data Review Tech- fight retarding passage the bill.’ ” headquarters and spoke about the nician, Baltimore (W.), Md. Frances arranged a “little cere- period in which the social security THELMA BORGES, Health Insurance mony” in the White House to mark programs were created. and Inquiries Examiner, Western PSC. President Roosevelt’s signing of the SYLVIA BOVITZ, Hearing Clerk, BHA, But enough. Detroit. Mich. Social Security Act. According to VIVIENNE BRIGHAM, State Program Severn: “She had provided pens for Anyone who wants to know Officer, HA, San Francisco RO. him to give to each of the congres- something of the political battles MARGARET BROWN, Claims Repre- sional sponsors as he wrote his sig- won and lost in the glory years of sentative. Kenmore, N.Y. nature. Roosevelt asked why there Ms. Perkins’ career, or the last years W. BULEMORE, ‘Field Representative, was no pen for her. When. she shook of her life, can find them faithfully Roseville, Mich. recounted in even the lesser of the BLANCHE BYARD, Health Insurance her head, he said she was respon- and Inquiries Examiner, Western PSC. sible for the whole thing and told biographies, and OASIS will leave PATRICIA BYNUM, Inquiry and Ex- his secretary, ‘Give me a first-class the reader to his or her own curi- pediting Specialist, Mid-America PSC. pen for Frances.’ ” osity. CARL CAMPBELL, Assistant District We certainly think this remark- Manager, Appleton, Wis. What Severn doesn’t note, but KENNETH CAMPBELL, Project Lead- Martin does, is the private anguish able woman is worth knowing about. er, Western PSC. Frances had to conceal on that day. She gives lie to the medieval prov- ELIZABETH CARTER, Assistant Sec- Minutes before she left her office to erb that “words are women, deeds tion Chief, BHA. Arlington, Va. go to the White House for the his- are men.” And she provides today’s JAMES CHICK; District Manager, Rock feminists who are searching for their Hill, SC. toric signing; she received a call PAULENE CHRISTEN, Administrative telling her that Paul had evaded ideological roots with a noteworthy Aid. Detroit (E.), Mich. the watchful eye of his “attendant” forebear. FLORENCE COHEN, Claims Examiner, and disappeared. The books can be ordered from Northeastern PSC. WILLIAM COOGAN, Claims Quality So Frances left the White House, the SSA Library, Room 571, Alt- Control Specialist, Mid-Atlantic PSC. took a train to New York City, and meyer Building, Baltimore, Md. ROBERT COOK, Records Analysis with a few close family friends spent 21235. 0 Clerk, Southeastern PSC.

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