Book Time #19: Remembrances
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins—Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Minimum Wage, Kristin Downey
Is Frances Perkins one of the most consequential Americans you’ve likely never heard of, responsible for nearly every good thing to happen during the New Deal, but not given adequate credit because of rank sexism? Or is this merely the version of events Frances Perkins believed and a future biographer duly printed? I do not pose this question to set up some grand reveal. After reading this 500-plus page biography on Frances Perkins, I genuinely don’t know.
This is a pity, because there’s no denying Perkins is a remarkable historical figure. Perkins is one of those people who popped up in so many books I have previously read that I became curious about her and sought out a biography. After all, she was the Secretary of Labor during FDR’s presidency, one of the most important periods in American labor history. And, yes, she. A woman cabinet member in the 1930s! The first time Perkins came up in passing, I assumed the pronoun was a printing error. After all, Frances is a gender-neutral name, intentionally chosen by Perkins as she started her career for that reason, we learn; her birth name was Fannie.
Indeed, Perkins is a wonderful subject for a biography. Her life touches an almost unbelievable number of critical American institutions and moments, from the Hull House to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to a what’s what of New Deal legislation to the Red Scare. She had a Forest Gump-like ability to pop up at history’s most consequential moments during a time when such moments came thick and fast.
But if Downey’s account is to be believed, Perkins not only popped up during these moments, she directed events. Perkins was the most important person for the passage of safety codes and wages and hours rules in New York following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Perkins wrote and orchestrated the passage of every key labor-related piece of New Deal legislation, including but not limited to the Social Security Act. Perkins ended the dockworkers strike in San Francisco of 1935 and also prevented the administration from sending in federal troops which may well have ended in disaster. Perkins got the Supreme Court to rapidly about-face on New Deal legislation, ending the court packing fight. About 300 pages into the book, it almost becomes comical. That thing you thought had nothing to do with Frances Perkins? Perkins did it.
To Downey’s credit, there are footnotes for all of this. Unfortunately, most footnotes of consequence go to the same source: “Remembrances of Frances Perkins,” an oral history she sat for in the 1950s. Every account of a contentious cabinet meeting in which Perkins ultimately gets her way (or doesn’t get her way, saving her from culpability for a lamentable failure), accounts of key legislation being passed (or not passed, which was never the fault or responsibility of Frances Perkins), and the germination of nation-changing policies, are almost always sourced to Perkins’ memory. Often, this includes a direct quotation of what someone else supposedly said decades ago. Apparently, Perkins’s greatest attribute was her perfect memory.
As I quoted historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes in last month’s Book Time, “In the making of a life story it is always a chancy business which anecdotes find their way into the written record, and which fall back into the mulch of unrecorded experience.” Indeed, sometimes authors are forced to rely on single accounts due to the vagaries of history. But it’s hard to believe that was the case here. Nearly all of these “remembrances” involve big important national or world events and famous historical figures. Some, if not most or all, of these discussions, events, and timelines could be independently verified or cross-referenced with other sources. After all, other people have “remembrances” too. Downey does sometimes refer to such sources, such as the diaries of other cabinet members, but it is almost always in service of quoting an instance of sexism from a man or citing how some other consequential person doubted Perkins. Wrongly, of course.
This is what is so vexing, and ultimately frustrating, about Downey’s treatment of Perkins’s life. This is not a poorly researched book. Downey consulted many more primary sources than just one oral history. But instead of embracing all the messy contradictions of historical memory, guiding readers through the fog of recollection, we instead get something much less, a glorified recounting of one person’s version of her own life. A person, mind you, even Downey herself admits cannot always be trusted to tell the truth. Perkins regularly lied to the press when she thought it prudent, lied about her age to everyone for her entire life, and deliberately omitted the facts of her early life, upbringing, and family matters when convenient or expedient. This, perhaps, is the least remarkable thing about Frances Perkins. Everyone constructs their own version of themselves for different audiences. And it’s precisely why any one person’s account cannot be trusted.
We even learn at the end of the book that Perkins expressed disdain for the historical record, dismissing a friend’s suggestion she write an autobiography to document her role in all these important events. Perkins apparently did this at the exact same time she was sitting for the oft-cited oral history so crucial to the book. There are fascinating contradictions here, both about Perkins herself and the time in which she lived, when a woman was able to accomplish so much but society was not yet willing to recognize a woman for being able to do so, a set of circumstances that clearly had a tremendous impact on Perkins. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t explore these contradictions. In fact, the book doesn’t even point out that Perkins scoffed at writing an autobiography at the same time she was sitting for a massive oral history project. The reader has to go through the footnotes and put two and two together.
I lament that I cannot trust this book because I want to believe in the greatness of Frances Perkins. She had an almost unfathomable number of friends and supporters, so there was obviously something about her that was truly special. It’s entirely possible she was precisely as incredible as this book makes her out to be. I just wish I could hear it from someone other than Frances Perkins.