Frances Perkins and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins (1880-1965) was having tea at a friend’s townhouse on North Washington Square. 

“I remember that the accident happened on a Saturday, … we heard the engines and we heard the screams and rushed out and rushed over where we could see what the trouble was…. [P]eople had just begun to jump when we got there. They had been … standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer…. They began to jump. The window was too crowded, and they would jump, hitting the sidewalk. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.” (Excerpt from a lecture given September 30, 1964, by Frances Perkins at Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations.)

From 1911 to 1915, the New York State Factory Investigating Commission examined factory working conditions and recommended reforms. Under Perkins’ direction, lawmakers passed thirty-six laws, improving workplace safety, fire codes, sanitation, child labor restrictions, and more. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt first noticed her work in labor reform and advocacy in New York City in 1910. In January 1929, FDR became Governor of New York, and he appointed Frances Perkins as Industrial Commissioner of the State of New York, the highest position in the state’s labor department.

Perkins was the driving force behind the New Deal. This package of laws protected average Americans during the Great Depression. She implemented relief programs that paid unemployed men to work on public projects. She secured unemployment insurance, pensions for the elderly, and financial help for the infirm in the Social Security Act of 1935. Perkins also established a minimum wage, maximum work hours, and eradicated child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

We must not forget Frances Perkins’ courageous work and allow all of it to be taken away by the government officials, who have no regard for maintaining safety and livable wages. This tragedy happened because wealthy politicians didn’t care about immigrant workers, child labor, or taking care of the disabled.