Perkins’s legacy continues to live on in our society today. With the five-day workweek, fire and food safety regulations, unemployment insurance, and Social Security, can you name the ways your own life or the lives of your family members have been impacted by Frances Perkins?
My entire family has been impacted. My siblings and I are baby boomers, thus social security and medicare are important to us. More so medicare given the health cost situation in our country. Fortunately none of us has ever needed unemployment insurance. Fire and food safety regulations I think we all take for granted, I would hate to think what might occur without them.
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I agree with Patricia_H and have similar experiences with social security and Medicare. I’ve taken safety issues for granted given what people endured earlier. Regulations change as science advances. I taught in a room with ceiling tiles made of an asbestos product. The school was demolished twenty years later.
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My husband takes advantage of social security and Medicare, too. I’m still a couple of years away, and I can tell you, health insurance costs are killing me! It’s awesome that by some miracle the Affordable Care Act got passed & has withstood attempts to repeal it because otherwise I’m sure I’d be uninsured. So big things do still get done, it’s just not easy!
And then there’s the five day work week! I guess some deep part of me knew that everyone worked pretty much non-stop back then, including most children, but for some reason I was shocked by it. I guess when you think about it, when we had an agrarian economy, working on one’s farm actually was a non-stop job for everyone, so I suppose it’s not surprising that as families transitioned to factory work, that expectation followed them. I still found it shocking/inhumane.
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I’ve always thought an historian should be President. ( biased maybe🤣) . Yes, much of our daily life has been impacted by the legislation Frances Perkins created, championed, and truly fought to put in place. Did you all read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair while you were young? I read it when I was about 8 years old. I was grossed out and enthralled!! I read about The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire and my imagination again soared. I must note that when on September 11, I watched those poor people jump from the Twin Towers , that is what I thought of. As we think critically of how our government has worked and can work to enrich our lives it is important to acknowledge the legislation and the leaders - of all kinds male, female LGBTQ. As we live through the next several years we all would be well served to remember and take note of how our government serves us and how it does not, what protections and services we miss and be mindful of that should we have the opportunity to vote again. It is easy to take these protections for granted because they have always been there for most of us, but, now that we know the struggle to get them perhaps we will be better prepared in the future to protect them. That is one of the magical benefits of knowing your history .
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Frances Perkins’s legacy certainly lives on. She made such an impact on safety and quality of life. The significance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire witnessed by her and the drive this created in her was amazing. She saw first hand the effect of poverty on women and children…lack of hygiene, lack of knowledge, lack of food especially availability of milk. How she championed these causes. Tackling unemployment and insurance to protect injured workers. Fighting for society to take care of their own…the social problems she identified and the solutions she sought benefit all of society today. I am one of these people who benefits from all that she has done.
Yes! And sadly it feels like these social safety nets are all being destroyed now – because billionaires don’t like paying taxes or being told what to do.
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I think everyone has been impacted by all the amazing work she’s accomplished, especially in a time that’s been very difficult for women! Social security enabled retirement for millions of people, and the 5 day work week ensured work/life balance. Many people today rely on these benefits to make a living and improve their quality of life.
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Even though Frances is no longer with us, she and her work impacts each and everyday. Without SS my mother, when my father died, would have been unable to live. She received a portion of my father’s SS as a widow. It literally saved her from living without any income. And starting over at 62 is not easy!!
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My family has been impacted by all except for unemployment insurance, which is vital for the work force. I very much appreciate the work that she and others did and want our country to protect these rights. There are always unintended consequences to rolling back regulations. They need to be carefully considered before changes are made.
I can’t think of any of the lives of myself and extended family that have not been greatly impacted by Frances Perkins! I am retired on social security and on Medicare and I cannot imagine not having those supports. I have disabled family members who have been on Medicaid. I remember how younger (but a generation older than me) family members sometimes had to convince much older relatives that there were supports such as this that they needed to sign up for. It was not something they had grown up with, but they certainly came to need and benefit from. Then when there were disabled family members in following generations, it was just accepted that was part of life. Thank goodness! When I think of the five-day workweek and all the safety regulations, I am just so very grateful - I know that has affected all of my family. I couldn’t help but smile when Frances mentioned Marshall Fields as one of the places to show for positive examples of safety. I had relatives who talked about working at Fields at some point in their lives. All in all, after reading this book, I just ended up so very appreciative for Perkin’s legacy!
This book made me think about what an impact Social Security has on our society. I can’t imagine what my mother’s life would have been like without it as a young widow raising three daughters.
My grandmother and mother both survived financially due to Social Security when each was widowed at a relatively young age. Much more recently, our adult son, who graduated from a specialized masters degree program, was able endure several months of unemployment because he received payments through unemployment insurance. Fortunately he found a job and is now contributing as a taxpayer, but the unemployment insurance made it possible for him to bridge the gap from graduation to securing a job offer in his chosen field. Until I read this book, I hadn’t fully thought about the fact that these programs didn’t exist a century ago, and I also hadn’t fully understood how little stood between ordinary people and financial disaster before these programs were put in place. My husband and I are close to retirement now and are in the process of figuring out how our retirement savings can be combined with social security to make retirement feasible. I am thanking Frances Perkins in my heart every day since I finished the book. Her vision and dedication have made a huge and positive difference for millions and millions of people.
Frances Perkins’ strong personality and back ground in social work gave her the right ingredients to promote social security and social welfare at the right time. I wonder what the assorted “security” measures, if any, would look like had she not been selected as Labor Secretary. My guess is that the creation and implementation of the programs would have taken much much longer. I also note that her programs weren’t a finished project–they have continued to be developed and changed/improved. For example, every worker did not automatically receive social security–farmers, preachers for example. Later, they could buy-in by paying a certain number of quarters. Sick leave and parental leave took longer and are still growing, but probably would not have even been considered without the social security background and experience. Universal health care will grow out of the experience we’ve had with Medicare and Obamacare. Thanks Ms Perkins for being persistent.
Every single aspect of all working persons lives are, and have been, impacted by the great things Perkins put in place. I am 66 and I am just about to start collecting Social Security. I have taken these privileges for granted since I started working at 16 years old (and started paying into SS). As I read the book I tried to imagine living at the time before these protections–and I just couldn’t. We all owe her a great deal.
I don’t know of any American that hasn’t been impacted by these laws. We appear to take these laws for granted these days with very few people left to understand the impact of what happens if these laws, programs and oversight are removed. Frances Perkins changed the lives of so many and was instrumental in creating the middle class.