Frances Perkins

Hello! My name is Frances Perkins. I was born a long, long time ago, on April 10th, 1880. When I was a little girl, I loved to read books and learn about the world. But what I wanted to do most of all was help people who were having a hard time. To learn how to do that, I went to college to study how people live and work together. Back then, it was very unusual for a woman to go to college, but I knew it was important for the work I wanted to do.

After I finished my studies, I moved to the big, busy New York City to become a social worker. Then one day, in the year 1911, I saw something that changed my life forever. A large factory, called the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, caught on fire. It was a terrible and sad sight. Many people were hurt because the building did not have safe exits or ways to escape. Seeing that fire made me feel so sad, but it also made me feel very determined. I decided right then that I would spend the rest of my life working to make sure that everyone had a safe place to work, so a tragedy like that would never happen again.

I started working very hard to help create new rules for safer buildings. A friend of mine, Franklin D. Roosevelt, noticed how much I cared about helping people. In 1933, when he became the president of the United States, he asked me to come to Washington, D.C. and join his team. He gave me the job of Secretary of Labor. This was a very big deal because I was the very first woman ever to be in the president's main group of helpers, which is called the Cabinet. In my important job, I helped create big ideas like Social Security, a plan to help take care of people when they get older. I also helped make rules for a minimum wage, which makes sure workers are paid fairly, and I helped pass laws to stop children from having to work in dangerous jobs.

I continued working to help other people for my entire life. It was my passion. I lived to be 85 years old. Today, people remember me as a woman who cared deeply and fought to make life better and safer for working people all across America. The ideas I helped put into place, like safe workplaces and Social Security, still help millions of families every single day, and I am very proud of that.