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December 21, 2024 44 mins

Frances Perkins was an incredibly influential American yet is virtually unknown. What did she do? A lot! For instance, Social Security was her brainchild. And that's just the tip of the old iceberg. Explore her legacy with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello friends, It's Josh and for this week's Select, I've
chosen our September twenty twenty episode on Francis Perkins. If
you haven't heard of her, that's okay. She's one of
the most unsung Americans ever and was even left out
of the history books for a while, all because she
was a woman. Check out this episode where Francis Perkins
gets her due.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff you
Should Know, The Amazing Unsung Woman Edition Volume two. At
least more than two. What number would you say then?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I don't know, but I'll tell you what if you
want to take a vote on maybe one of the
most undersung while at the same time being most influential
Americans to ever live.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Of Neil Diamond be Oh, he was very sung.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I know, I'm not a big fan.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Anyway, you would be hard pressed to overlook ms Perkins.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, miss Francis Perkins.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Totally agree. Had never heard her name before, had never
even known she existed. But yeah, the more you dig injury,
the more you was like, it was almost a crime
that this woman was virtually written out of the history books.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah. And if you are.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
One of those people who was unfortunate to not be
able to work right now during quarantine and the effects
of COVID nineteen, and you are not lucky enough, but
you know, deservedly enough receiving unemployment insurance, you can thank
Francis Perkins for that.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
That's right. And every single person who's getting a check
as measley as they've gotten lately is getting one because
of this system that Francis Perkins set up. And what's
really I think worth noting too, this is exactly the
kind of situation that she got this passed for, that

(02:13):
she helped design this for totally. Because there's a quote
I can't remember exactly where the quote was, but to
paraphrase it, it's basically like, we need to we need
to always keep our eye on the long term and
plan for the worst case scenario. While yes, there's a
lot of immediate needs that we need, but there's always
going to be something that comes down the road, and

(02:34):
if we have planned for it, we're way better off.
Just imagine how disastrous it would be on top of
the current disaster. If there wasn't such a thing as
unemployment insurance and this is how we found out that
we really kind of needed.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, it would be dark age's stuff in this country.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah. So if you have gotten your unemployment insurance check
and it has helped you, thank Francis Perkins somehow.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, and we want to thank How Stuff Works. That's
where part of this research came from, and some other places,
but notably. And I want to shout this out because
this is a library intern at the FDR Library who
wrote a paper called Honoring the Achievements of FDR Secretary
of Labor Jessica Brightman. This is really good stuff and

(03:20):
she's a library intern and we want to shout her out.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, she did great.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Or she was at the time. I imagine she's moved
on from that internship.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
After she turned that say in you bet you're bippy.
She did so.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Francis Perkins was born Fanny Coralai Perkins in Boston in
eighteen eighty, but her relatives in her ancestors, came from Maine.
And it's kind of funny here at the beginning of
this how Stuff Works thing, it says she so undersung

(03:51):
the even residents of her hometown of Demara scott A, Maine,
didn't seem familiar with her legacy. I think that says
more about.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Maine, right, They're like, we don't need to help her
put on airs.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, then, just like you know, I don't ask, I
don't tell, I just don't.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Whatever she lived here, great good for her.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
I want to say. Also before the residents of Newcastle
busta a vein in their forehead, she's also cited as
a native of Newcastle, Maine, and they're right across the
Demara Scatta River from one another. I think she's from Newcastle.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Was this like Adidas Puma thing?

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Maybe? Maybe, except to imagine if neither town knew what
shoes were, that would be a pretty accurate analogy. Oh boy,
I love so she Yeah she was. She came from
really like died in the wool Yankee stock. Her family

(04:51):
came over I think in the sixteen eighties. Her she
had like her family had built an outpost during the
French Indian and wore her grandmother, who had more of
an influence on her, she said than anybody. Had a
cousin who she was close to, who founded Howard University,

(05:11):
and fought for the rights of newly freed African Americans.
She came from like a long line of people who
cared about other people, and yet surprisingly her parents were
very conservative. They were in favor of, you know, helping
the poor, but not mingling with them, helping them, like

(05:31):
helping them by like, you know, sending some money or
something like that. And they produced a child, Fanny Francis.
She changed her name, I think in I don't know
her twenties or thirties. She was the opposite way. She
was like, no, like, people are people and they all

(05:52):
deserve help, and there's a lot of injustice in this world,
and I want to change it myself. And she's one
of those people who actually did enact tremendous change for
all the right reasons.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, she said, people are people, so why should it
be you.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
And I should get along so awfully?

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Which one was that? Depeche mode?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Depeche Mode, I can't baby.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Hey, that's Emily's jam.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
I mean she would She probably has that tattooed on
her body somewhere.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
In fact, we're both taking that none of my business.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
We're both doing that that silly, and I never do
these things on Facebook, But I have time now the
top ten most influential albums, And I was like, which
one are you gonna pick? New Order or depeche Mode
for her? Because that's a that's a tough one.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Well, I mean, can't She's got ten to choose from, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
But I think for her those two are so inextricably tied.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
That it was one or the other.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
I gotcha.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
And she went to depeche Mode because they were first,
and that's probably more influential.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Depeche Mode was before New Order. Huh yes, I mean
technically if you count New Order as an out outcropping
of Joy than they were first.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Oh so well, Joy Division was different, though it.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Was pretty different, different enough that they might as well
be two different bands in which they were. You know
who we need to give us the judgment call is
Francis Perkins, who apparently would not have enjoyed our banter.
She was very much known as like a dour, serious woman.
But from what I can tell, that's actually a public

(07:26):
persona that she wore to get men to take her seriously.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, who can blame her because we'll see later on
about her. It's no accident that she's lost to history
in many ways. But what she was also was highly educated.
She graduated from Mount Holyoake in nineteen oh two, where
she majored in chemistry and physics, even though she made
her name in economics, which means she was a very

(07:54):
well rounded human and had a very large brain.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
And apparently she had made it all the way through college.
In her senior year, I think she attended an economics
lecture by Florence Kelly, who was a huge wage justice crusader,
and that just changed her life.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, big time.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
In nineteen this is post college, she went to Philly
and she became general secretary of the Philadelphia Research and
Protective Association.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
What did she do.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
There, Well, she was in charge of investigating employment agencies
that were fake and that preyed on women, immigrant women specifically,
and she had to sort of deal with the dregs
of society in that job and did so very successfully,
and then decided she wanted to keep her education going,

(08:46):
so while she was in Philly, she went to the
Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of
Pennsylvania because that's super easy and light learning. And then
after that she went to Columbia where she earned and
MA and social economics in nineteen ten.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
And we should say, like she's getting all of this schooling,
but at the same time, she's also set herself off
on a what's that like, learn while you work.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Program called internship.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Guess, So that's not exactly what I'm looking for, but yeah,
I mean it makes sense. So she set herself up
on a real world internship program. So while she was
in Philly working for that bureau, she was investigating those
those fake employment rackets, Like she was on the ground
doing this stuff, like carrying out these inspections, investigating factories,

(09:38):
like taking notes in like.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
The early twenties.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, basically, yeah, while she's studying this stuff, she's also
out doing and seeing this stuff firsthand that she's learning about,
which from what I can tell, she really kind of
digested and held on to and it just kept driving
her for the rest of her life. What she saw.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
I think that's called the School of Hard Knocks.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
It is, But she enrolled then the Wharton School and
the School of Hard Knocks at the same time, which
is pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
And after Columbia, after she got that master's, for two
years she served as executive secretary of the Consumers League
of New York. And this is where she really felt
her life calling to improve wages, improve working conditions because
this was nineteen ten through nineteen twelve and things weren't

(10:27):
great in factories at the time. We could do a
podcast on I don't know what the focus would be,
necessarily because we've done labor unions.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
But just labor conditions. Yeah, maybe so eye opening, But
she did. This is one of the things she did.
There's very few more depressing words than these strung together.
She improved working conditions for children. Yeah, that was one
of the things she did, I know, And that was

(10:57):
at the Consumers League of New York. And she got
there and was like, yes, I've achieved one of my
first goals, which is working directly with the same Florence
Kelly who gave the economics lecture that changed her life
years before Mount Holyoke.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, So she was one of those ones who said
I want to do this, and then would do it
and then would move on to the next thing.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
She wouldn't stand around and wait for the statue to
be built in her honor.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
So we take a break, Yes, all right, we're gonna
take a break and talk about a pretty devastating fire
in New York City that changed the course of her
life right after this. What fire, Chuck, I'm talking about

(12:00):
the Triangle shirt waist fire in Manhattan, sort of near
Washington Square Park in Greenwich, right next to Washington Square
Park in Greenwich Village.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
I think it's an NYU building though.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
It is, and I tried to pinpoint if that was
the building where I actually had my film classes.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Was it?

Speaker 3 (12:17):
I don't know. I can't quite tell.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
We got to know, Chuck.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
I'll see if I can find out.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
But a shirt waist was a woman's blouse, is what
they called it at the time. And this was a
factory that made women's blouses. If you worked there, you
were probably a young woman, you might be an immigrant.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
You would work about fifty two hours a week.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Oh, I saw twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
What does that math turn out to Let's.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
See seventy seven hundred and twenty Wait, I can't do
math out loud.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, let's say between fifty two and eighty hours a week.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
No, No, it was way more than that. Twelve times
seven eighty four. Yeah, that's what I said, eighty four
hours a week. But like, even that doesn't sound that big.
Twelve hour days, seven days a week, just to keep your.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Job, right, so I saw fifty two.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Either way, they made between seven and twelve dollars a
week making these blouses for.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Women, which was not good even back then.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, it wasn't good.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
And because this was a factory in New York in
nineteen eleven, they had the doors locked, they had the
staircases locked. They thought it prevented theft. If you remember
what happened to locked doors and stairwells in our Hotel
Fire episode, the same thing happened here on March twenty fifth,
nineteen eleven when the triangle shirt waist fire started because

(13:47):
they think of a match or a cigarette but thrown
into a waste spin and it just, you know, everything
in there was flammable practically that wasn't metal because of
all these fabrics like highly flammable.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
It went up really quick.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
It's one of the deadliest US workplace disasters of all
time to this day. Four one hundred and forty six
workers died, one hundred and twenty three of which were
women and girls between the ages of generally between fourteen
and twenty three.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
The oldest was forty three, but that was kind of
an outlier, and.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Sixty two of those people jumped to their death in
front of full view of New York City, including.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Francis Perkins.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Right in front of Francis Perkins. She didn't jump to
her death, no, no, no, So yeah, she's literally witnessing
one of the turning points in history as it happens,
seeing teenage girls jump out of the ninth floor of
this building because it's on fire. And not only is
she witnessing a fire that will change history, she is

(14:52):
one of the people that will force history to change
because of this fire. The fate or the destiny that
put her a block away from this fire when it
happened is it's just astounding to me that she was there,
because she went on to be one of the people
who said this is never going to happen again, and

(15:14):
under her watch, it basically didn't. It was the worst
that it ever got and it never got that bad
again because of the safeguards she forced the state and
then later on other states in the federal government to adopt.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, I mean, she was already kind of headed down
this road anyway, she was already part of the New
York State Factory Investigating Commission, and because of this fire,
which she I don't think we said, she was just
having tea across the park there, ran over and saw this.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
One of the things she saw.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
At one point, there were twenty people that had managed
to get out a window onto a fire escape, one
of those tiny, little flimsy New York fire escapes, and
that all twenty of those people and collapsed, and they
all fel to their one hundred feet to their death
right in front of her face.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, we need to do an entire episode on that,
at the very least, just to shame the two owners,
who's who were just totally responsible for all those deaths.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Absolutely, but this was sort of just the way it was,
I mean, not absolving them, but she saw this as
part of the bigger problem, not like these two owners
are responsible, but she was like, it was an indictment
of the system.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah, it was. But at the same time, those guys
were particularly nasty examining for sure, the system. They weren't
averaged by any means from what I understand.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
No, but what was average was the fact that they
didn't have fire codes, and she's the person that brought
that in.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
By the time she was in.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Her early thirties, she had called for and successfully called
for exit signs, occupancy limits, sprinklers, fire escapes, unlocked doors,
and stairwells, how wide the doorways had to be depending
on your factory floor, like all these of common sense things.
Like a lot of people saw this stuff happen and

(17:06):
saw this incident that day and were horrified, but Francis
Perkins said, nope, I'm going to change it. I'm a
woman in nineteen eleven and I'm in my early thirties,
but I'm going to make this happen. And she did.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
She did. She was appointed to the New York Committee
on Safety under the recommendation of Teddy Roosevelt, which says
a lot because that means she'd already made a name
for herself in her twenties in New York City politics,
to the point where Teddy Roosevelt would say, like, you
really kind of need this woman on there. And then
let's not forget the fact that that operative word here

(17:37):
was woman as far as society was concerned at the time,
and this legislation that she got passed through in New York,
or that she helped get passed through in New York,
like I was saying, it became a model for other
states and then eventually the federal fire codes because of this,
because of largely because of her efforts, and she made

(18:00):
a name for so she'd already made a name for self,
but this really kind of helped cement her name. And
she started working closely with a guy named alfredy Smith
who was an assemblyman from New York, right, but he
she won his respect pretty easily. I think they worked
on this New York Committee on Safety together, and so

(18:22):
when he became governor, she kind of rose along with him.
She was appointed by him to New York States Industrial Commission,
which made her the first woman to be appointed to
a state government position in the country. And with her
eight thousand dollars salary, she was the highest paid woman
to hold any office in the United States at the time.

(18:43):
So she became important pretty quick. But she became important everybody,
This is really important to remember by hard work and heart,
which is just a wonderful combination. Like amazing things happen
from people who have that combination.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, and she ingratiated herself to these male politicians a
couple of different important times in her life, and the
first one was Alfredy Smith, like you were saying, so
she rose along with him because he knew He was like, man,
I don't care if she's a woman or not. She
works harder than anyone I know, and she gets the

(19:21):
job done. So I'm just going to bring her along with.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Me and not just works harder. She was known as
a policy expert about worker safety and wage justice by
this time, too.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Well, yeah, I mean I talked about her very large
brain and her higher education. She was super super smart,
Like I said, she majored in chemistry and physics, even
though her real love was econ.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
So it's like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 (19:46):
No, we're not kidding at all.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
So no, it's very much true.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
So, like you were saying, she first kind of rose
to prominence with Alfredy Smith, who, from what I could tell,
I didn't get to research him very much, but the
stuff that I ran across the references to him, he
seemed like a genuine like true believer crusader and justice
social justice as well. So they were like a good

(20:09):
a good pair, and he made it as far as
New York governor. He ran for president and didn't win. Uh.
And when he didn't win, he, I guess lost the
governorship and was succeeded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And so
Roosevelt came in came into power in New York as
the governor of New York. Uh, and Francis Perkins was

(20:31):
already there, and it had already built up a reputation,
and Roosevelt recognized the kind of person she was pretty quickly,
because a lot of people are you know, you can
give a lot of credit or a lot of vilification
to Roosevelt for his New Deal policies, depending on your
political stripes. But if you, you know, if you admire
him for it, and I think most people should. He

(20:55):
it wasn't just him. One of his great talents to
recognize talent in othersah and to bring those people together
and then enact policies based on their expertise and their recommendations.
And one of those people was Francis Perkins, starting when
he was governor of New York and then also when
he became president too.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, So when he came into his governorship, she had
already been named and was the chairperson called it a
chairman back then in nineteen twenty six of the State
Industrial Board.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
She was doing a great job there, and.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Then in nineteen twenty nine FDR appointed her as the
Industrial Commissioner of the State of New York.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
And what happens.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
The stock market crashes, the Great Depression hits America like
a punch in the face, and she was the one
who stepped in and got it in his ear and said,
you know what, I know that we have to feed
people right now. We have really immediate needs. But like
you mentioned earlier in the episode, she thought about the
big picture and long term goal. She said, we need

(22:01):
to really take swift action here. So with her help,
they created a committee unemployment. He appointed her the head
of that, and then when he was elected president in
nineteen thirty three, he said, you know what, I'm going
to point you to be my Secretary of Labor.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
That was huge.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
I've been working with you for twenty years, I trust you,
and you're going to do a great job. And the
public roundly said, what a woman in the cabinet.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
They really did, I mean like she was the first cabinet,
first woman to serve it as a cabinet member. I mean,
women had just gotten the right to vote about thirteen
twelve or thirteen years before.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
So she couldn't vote till she was forty, I know.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
And yet she held public public appointed offices and still
couldn't vote, but.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Wasn't allowed to vote for her boss.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Right, exactly. Yeah, So it was a really big deal
that FDR appointed a woman as a to a cabinet position,
and an important cabinet position too. I mean, like it's
not like there's any necessarily unimportant cabinet positions, but Secretary
of Labor is pretty big, especially, yeah, especially then, right,

(23:12):
and especially you know, at a time when this emerging
superpower took a huge punch in the face and got
knocked on its butt like the rest of the world
by the Great Depression. This is important stuff that they
were trying to figure out on the fly. But he
chose really great person who wasn't really accepted at first,
not just by the public but by virtually anybody. The

(23:34):
labor unions weren't happy she was there because she had
a background in social work and policy.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Not yeah, labor than to death, yes, but she.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Eventually won them over, just by virtue of what she did, Like,
the labor movement was on the ropes at the time.
The Progressive era ran from I think eighteen ninety to
about nineteen twenty. So by the time nineteen twenty nine,
nineteen thirty comes around, it's eyeing off the labor movement.
But under her leadership as the Department of Labor Secretary,

(24:07):
she revived it. And by the time she either died
or left office I can't remember, I think a third
of all Americans were members of unions.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, and pre the union stuff like kind of right
after the Great Depression hit.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
One of the first things.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
They did together was created the Civilian Conservation Corps the CCC,
which was a really big success, one of the big
early successes of the New Deal in that they said,
you know what, we have all this, We have this
workforce of these unskilled, unmarried men, and let's get these
guys working in conservation. We have this vast areas of

(24:49):
rural land and natural resources, and let's send these guys
out there to work on this stuff. And they did,
and it provided a ton of jobs through the Civilian
Conservation Corps.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
It did, and it also helped reinforce and build out
America's infrastructure too, because they had all this labor that
the government was putting to work doing it right. So
she was in charge of overseeing that. And one of
the other I guess the next big thing, I think
it was before Social Security, was something called the Wagner Act,

(25:22):
and the Wagner.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Act came, I mean the Wagner Act.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
The Wagner Wagner Act, depending on your persuasion. It gave
workers the right to unionize, in the right to collectively bargain.
And one of her roles was to go out and
promote this stuff, not just to you know, other members
of the government or members of industry, but to individual

(25:49):
Americans too. So in nineteen thirty three alone, she gave
one hundred different policy speeches in just that one year
on new Deal projects promoting them. And one of the
speech as she gave, I don't know if it was
in that year or not, but she went to Homestead, Pennsylvania,
right across the river from Pittsburgh, where Carnegie Steel was headquartered,

(26:09):
and she was going to inform these workers about their
newly won rights through the Wagner Act, and Carnegie Steel
and the local government would not give her any place
to hold this meeting. They wouldn't give the Secretary of
Labor a place to talk to voters. So she and
there's apparently a famous picture of her leading all of

(26:29):
these steel workers on foot to a post office. She's like, Oh,
I can think of a place where I can assemble legally,
and that is the post office. So she gave her
speech on the grounds of the Homestead Post Office two
thousands of steel workers, informing them that they could legally
unionize and bargain collectively for workers' rights.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
I feel like if I feel like we had to
have talked about her in our union's episode, and if
we didn't, shame on us, but also shame on the
fact that she probably didn't pop up in our research,
which is one.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
Of the problems.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, mostly the second one.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
All right, So I'm going to pass that buck.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Right the book stops over there.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Well, we're making up for it now either.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Way, Okay, Chuck. So we were saying at the outset
that if you got an unemployment check, thank Francis Perkins,
or if you ever get an unemployment check, if you
even like the idea of the fact that an unemployment
insurance policy is out there for you in case you
ever need it. Thank Francis Perkins. And the reason you
fut thank Francis Perkins is because she basically oversaw the

(27:36):
creation of the legislation that became the Social Security Act
of nineteen thirty five. And when I say oversaw the
creation of that legislation, like she that was it. She
was the head of this cabinet level committee that was
assigned the task of coming up with a social insuranrants policy,

(28:00):
a social safety net for the country. And they came
up with this within six months, this full policy report,
and within two days of delivering the report, FDR turned
around and unveiled the Social Security Program idea to Congress,
and another six months or so later, maybe eight passed

(28:20):
into law.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, and boy, we should do one on social security
at some point.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
I agree, I think we have. Man, I'm all really positive. Yeah,
it really rings a bell. Go ahead, I'm looking at it.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Well, no, I'm going to have our little our assistant
over here check that.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Can you go and check on that? Okay, they're on it.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Who is Tommy Chong?

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Like we've ever had anyone that worked for us.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
That's the funny thing is when we get emails over
the years they're like, well to Josh and Chuck and
Jerry or whoever on your staff is reading this.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
I was like, yeah, it's pretty much us.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, well we're these emails while we're having to sweep
up the studio.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Well, I want to be fair. To be fair, we
work for a big podcasting network and there are a
lot of people that help us get stuff out in
the world, but we have never had like a stuff
you should know staff of eight people who only work
for us in research for us and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
And I feel like it really shows in the podcast,
like I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
You said that, because I felt like I was patting
ourselves on the back for a second.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
There the opposite.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
You dash that very fast.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Sure self deprecation, Chuck, that's our specialty.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
So social security, what we're talking about in general, everyone
knows what this is is basically a system where younger,
hardy people working hard in this country help out older people,
retired people, perhaps disabled people, people that have had work
related accidents.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
People who wear funny hats, people.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Who wear funny hats and pay into this system.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
That ideally, and you know, we're not going to get
into the weeds here that would come on our Social
Security podcasts. But ideally then when you are old or
in need, then you have that same money waiting for
you because of the younger generation and the younger workforce.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Right, that's the brilliance of the whole thing is it's
a transfer payment system to where you are directly funding
the people who are retired now, but it's on the
premise that people behind you are going to fund into
this to support you later on. It's beautiful. It's a
genius idea. And apparently FDR sent her Francis Perkins to

(30:56):
study the British system of unemployment and insurance even before
he was president, back when he was Governor of New York.
Then he became the first public official to commit to
developing an unemployment insurance plan. And it was at the
persistent behest of Francis Perkins that he did that.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, and it's not like, I mean, he didn't run
for office with social security on his list of things
to do.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Well. Yeah, that's the thing A lot of people say, like,
if it weren't for her, no joke, this stuff probably
wouldn't exist, certainly not in the form that it does now,
and that's not necessarily fair. There are like there were
programs that had like Social Security type programs among the states,
including unemployment programs, but they were ad hoc, they were patchwork.

(31:44):
Most states didn't have them. And it's the kind of
the beauty of this the federal program is they're basically like, okay,
states do this, but we're going to oversee and organize
it and help fund it.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, and it's not like I was saying that all
the FDR was like not a champion of it or
was just lazy. He was He had a bunch of
stuff going on, and he had a bunch of irons
in the fire. So he needed her to come in
and say, hey, listen, this is all great because we're
in a tragic situation right now, like we're trying to
put out a fire, but what I want to do

(32:19):
is make sure another fire doesn't happen in the future.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yes, And that was like her whole thing, like, we
do need to make sure that people get peanut butter
sandwiches because their families are going to starve. Like, yes,
these immediate needs have to be met, but we also
simultaneously have to plan for the future too. It was
just this persistent drum that she'd beat, like, we're going
to continue to have problems. Let's plan for him now.

(32:45):
Like the level of visionariness in this person was, you
just don't see that. I can't think of too many
other people who've come and gone in the federal government
in the United States at least that had that level
of I guess, awareness of looking down the line that
far rather than just you know, four years out or
to the next election.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
And she also, you know, we talked about some of
the things she did earlier in terms of her career
in terms of fair labor practices, but when she was
Secretary of Labor, she had real teeth to make real change,
and during her tenure she helped craft the Fair Labor
Standards Act, she helped establish minimum wage laws, maximum work

(33:27):
hours laws, and she finally said, you know what, maybe
we shouldn't make labor for children better. Maybe we should
not bring our children to work and make them work.
So let's just get rid of child labor altogether.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
And you can make the case, Chuck, that she is
the woman who gave America's kids the concept of a childhood. Yeah,
at the very least she extended it by many, many years.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
I've got another amazing fact about her. She I believe
is the first cabinet member who Congress ever sought to impeach.
Oh really, yes, I'm almost positive that's correct. I know
that they did try to impeach her, and they failed
in the impeachment, not just the conviction. They couldn't get
enough support for articles of impeachment. But it was because

(34:14):
she refused to deport an Australian longshoreman who'd successfully organized
a general strike in San Francisco and the anti communist
elements in Congress suspected that this guy was a Communist
and wanted him out, And she said, you know, I
don't think very highly of this guy. I don't really

(34:35):
agree with a lot of what he stands for. But
I don't think that you have really good evidence, and
I think this is all retaliation for the strike you organized.
So I'm not going to deport him. And you might say, well,
what did this lady have to do with deporting? Apparently,
back in the day the immigration the power of immigration
or control of immigration was up to the Department of Labor,

(34:58):
so the Secretary of Labor was also in charge of immigration,
which really kind of gives you an idea of where
America's immigration policies, you know, where their mind was at. Yeah,
that it was about importing you know, good good, good workers,
or also controlling who came in to keep competition for
jobs down totally. But so she was in charge of immigration, which,

(35:21):
as we'll see later on, she used to great effect.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
Is that our little uh is that our cherry on
top at the end?

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, I think, so, okay, that's a good idea. It's
it's the kid with the last question in Q and.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
A man uh and not the drunk guy.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
I hate that guy.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
So when FDR.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Passed away in nineteen forty five, she was the longest
serving Labor secretary and one of only two cabinet members
to serve the entire length of his super super long presidency.
And she held over into Truman as well. He was like,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So you're welcome
to stay, which you don't see a lot of that anymore.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
She published a biography, a bestseller about FDR called The
Roosevelt I Knew. And here are a few other just sort
of career feathers in her cap she was the head
of the American delegation to the International Labor Organization in Paris.
Truman appointed her to the US Civil Service Commission, which

(36:22):
was a position she held till nineteen fifty three. And
she basically accomplished every single one of her goals while
she was Secretary of Labor except for one thing she
went in there wanting to do, which was universal access
to healthcare.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, which is kind of a bummer.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Some people might say it's a bummer. Some people might
say good.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Sure. She also played drums for docin for a brief time,
for a little bit. She did it all and all
while wearing a frumpy, tri cornered hat.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
And then after that she did what a lot of
people in public policy do. She went on to teach
and lecture at the New York State School of Industrial
and Labor Relations at Cornell University. She did that too,
till she was eighty five years old when she passed
away in nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yes, there are a couple of other things to throw
into Both her husband and her daughter suffered from what
we today called bipolar disorder. She cared for them their
entire lives.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
That little thing yeah, right, can you imagine.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
No, while she's doing all this other stuff, she made
sure that they were cared for, took care of them
directly herself. And one of the other things I think
is worth mentioning too, that while before FDR became president,
while she was working in New York, she was already
known publicly before she became Secretary of Labor because she

(37:49):
was the first public official to call Hoover out on
his BS when he was downplaying joblessness numbers and unemployment
figures and just general terrible economic news and pretending things
were way better than they were. She was the first
person to step up and publicly contradict him and made
national news for that.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
And you know, again, this is a woman doing this
in like nineteen thirty, so just that alone makes national news.
But she was also calling them out on his BS.
And one thing that we have to say before you
finished with the cherry on top, Chuck, she had guys
figured out. She had a folder called Notes on the
Male Mind, and she would just take notes on guys

(38:33):
and men that she worked with and just kind of
try to get an understanding of them. And she realized
that the way to get male colleagues to treat you
normally or maybe even respect you is to remind them
of their mother. Wow, that's what it takes, apparently to
get a guy to treat a woman with respect. That

(38:56):
work well.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
And you know we mentioned why she's undersung there. You know,
history is written by men. We all know this, and
a lot of those New Deal histories in the seventies
and eighties didn't even mention her, which is just staggering
that you can write a history of the New Deal
and not mentioned Francis Perkins. It's just like a black
eye on any author that did something like that.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
It almost seems malicious in a weird way, like I'd
like to think that that's not the.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Case, but what is there? It's nuts, it's weird. So
the cherry on top here at the end is World
War two. World War two is not a cherry on top.
But she was watching Hitler do his thing in Germany
and got really worried.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
She's like, man, that guy's cranked.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
She was read about anti Semitism and everything that was
going on with the violence there, and she wanted to
help German refugees escape. And at the time, the Coolidge
administration and the immigration laws that came through his administration
were really tough, and Americans were very fearful that relaxing
these laws would increase the job competition and that Americans

(40:05):
weren't going to have these jobs. And she said, you
know what, I don't agree the immigration services under the
Department of Labor, and so I am going to put
some quotas down to get some of these refugees here
and to aid them. And she did that to great success.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yes, she made sure that about at least fifty five
thousand Jewish German immigrants made their way into the United
States through these Department of Labor immigration quotas and another
I think two hundred thousand people in general were rescued
from Europe as World War Two was starting to develop

(40:42):
over there because of her. Just on top of everything else,
she also saved a bunch of tens of thousands of
Jewish people from Hitler in World War two. Amazing, amazing, Chuck,
I guess that's it for Francis Perkins. Huh, that's it. Well,
if you want to know more about Francis Perkins, go
start reading about her, because there's even more detail to

(41:02):
her life than we captured here. And she's worth reading about.
Very admirable person. And since I said admirable, it's time
for listener mail.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
I'm gonna call this helping a helper, and this is
from a Tawny.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Tony says this.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Hey, guys, have been sewing face masks for almost a
month now, and I'm close to my one thousandth mask.
Nice It's a lot I have given and donated to friends, family,
co workers.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
I'm a nine one one.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Dispatcher by the way, healthcare workers, retail workers, delivery people,
postal workers, and other essential workers.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
And people wearing funny hats.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
People wearing funny hats and complete strangers.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Now that face masks have become mandatory here in San Diego,
the need has grown substantially. And through all of this,
you three have been with me in keeping me company
about Jerry too.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Well yeah, okay, she wasn't talking about Tommy Chong. I'll
tell you that.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Old episodes and new have entertained me through the tedious
hours of cutting, fabric, ironing, pinning, and sewing. I started
listening to your podcast while I was in the Navy
and soon introduce you guys to my husband, who was
still in the military. We have both listened and learned
through the years together. Thank you for continuing your show
and helping the helpers of the world. Side note, love

(42:22):
the nine to one to one Dispatcher episode and thank
you for clearing up the pizza order myth Second side note,
I wrote my master's thesis on the use of body
worn cameras by law enforcement, and I decided to focus
on that topic after listening to that awesome episode. Oh Na, Yeah,
that's pretty cool. All three of you are thanked and
mentioned in the thesis.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Even oh that's cool.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
When I'm tired and don't want to sew anymore, I
think of this quote.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
For mister Rogers head down.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
When I was a boy and I would see scary
things in the news, my mother would say to me,
look for the helpers. You will always find people who
are helping.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Go to them and they will help you.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
And that is from Tawny, And that's a great quote, Tony.
I'm gonna use that at my own house.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
It's kind of like, if you're afraid of flying, watch
the flight attendants and as long as they're not freaking out,
you're fine. It's the exact same thing he's saying when
the s goes down, there's people helping, so that's always good.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
God bless mister Rogers and.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
You man man. Yep, thanks a lot, is it?

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Tony Tawny t a w n Y.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
I couldn't tell if you were just putting a little
mustard on the Tony.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
No like Tawny Kataan.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Sure, yeah from the white Snake video that cultural icon.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Well, thanks a lot, Tawny. I apologize for Chuck calling
you Tawny Katane. Okay, can I apologize for you? Charge?

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Okay, Well I'm gonna do that. If you want to
get me to apologize for Charles, let's see if you
can do it. You can send us an email, wrap
it up, spanking on the bottom, and send it off
to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Chuck Bryant

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