My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you don’t know who Frances Perkins is, you must read this book by Kirstin Downey. The first female Cabinet member, she was the Secretary of Labor under FDR, from 1933 through 1945. Her ideas and her perseverance created many of the programs that encompassed the New Deal. These included a forty-hour workweek, a minimum wage, worker’s compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, and a revitalized public employment service. The only thing she advocated for that she didn’t get was national health insurance, which took until 2010.

I told a friend over dinner recently that I’d never heard of Perkins until 2011, when the Republican Governor of Maine dissed this Maine native and removed a mural that included her and renamed a room that bore her name. I went through grade school, high school and college without ever hearing about her. That is a disgrace. Downey has done the country a great service in resurrecting her name and accomplishments.

What’s most impressive is that she did this as a woman in the early 20th century. Reading about the sniping that she had to endure as a strong woman in a national position of power was truly sad. More pathetic is that such discrimination still occurs today and remains the bread and butter of the right. The war on women didn’t start today or in the 1930s, but its main proponents were then, and are now, Republicans.

While Perkins had many great attributes, there were a few that I didn’t like. Both Perkins and Downey buy wholesale into the Red Scare and the hounding of decent people for thinking differently. They try to justify the un-American assault on freedom of thought but more often they say one guilty person justifies the wholesale character assassinations that occurred. Perkins helped set up loyalty systems and vetting then complained that the media blew the red scare out of proportion. Downey should read Jay Feldman’s “Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America.”

Perkins also kept quiet about many things, including sexism, racism, and the Holocaust. She and Downey attribute this to her strong New England training to keep quiet, not rock the boat and not embarrass one’s boss. In my opinion, leaders need to speak out not embrace outdated codes of conduct. If something is wrong, keeping quiet just perpetuates the problem.

A situation that Downey doesn’t comment on is when Perkins is replaced by Lewis B. Schwellenbach as Secretary of Labor under Truman. She complains that Schwellenbach showed up in her office after being sworn in and took it over, regardless of Perkins' last minute scheduled items. Perkins herself did the very same thing when she took over as Secretary of Labor in 1933. The situation is ripe for commentary, but Downey only paints Schwellenbach in a bad light.

Finally, I was put off by the author and Perkins religiousness, especially toward the end of the book. Perkins believe that secularization was bad, claiming that only her god and Christians had people’s best interests in mind. She tries to say that the nation was not founded as a secular nation, going so far as to focus more on the 20th century invention of “in god we trust” rather than the founding motto of “e pluribus unum.”

As far as the mechanics of the book go, I think Downey should have done another draft or two before publication. The book flow is awkward, jumping back and forth in time as she coves different topics. I felt a little whiplash as each chapter, and sometimes sub-chapters, jerked back to early 1933 before moving ahead to the mid-to-late 30s and then the 40s. Downey also adores her subject, to the detriment of all the other actors. No one is perfect, but in this book you might think Perkins is a god while everyone else is a bumbling fool, devoted acolyte of Perkins or a devious person.

There is a special callousness by both Perkins and Downey to Eleanor Roosevelt. They both ignored the great things that woman did, especially with her work related to the United Nations. They snipe at her and diminish her work, claiming that she only showboated, self-aggrandized and road FDR’s coattails, which is so incredibly shallow. They do to Eleanor Roosevelt what they rightfully complain about was done to Perkins while she was a national figure.

Finally, I wasn’t happy that the author called her subject by her first name throughout the book, while rarely referring to the other actors, especially the men, by their first names.

Having said all that, I think this is a good book and the topic is something everyone in America should know about. Frances Perkins changed our world and what she did affects every American today.