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Remembering Frances Perkins
This lifetime advocate of workers rights helped pioneer todays workplace safety and health programs.
by Dionisia M. Xenos
The sound of fire engines disrupted the silence in New York Citys Greenwich Village. Nearby, Frances Perkins was enjoying Saturday tea with her neighbor when the noise aroused their curiosity. The women scurried across Washington Square to find the top floors of the Asche Building, which housed the Triangle Shirt Waist Company, in flames.
The building doors, locked to prevent employee theft, blocked the workers escape from the burning building. Perkins witnessed the young employees on the ledges of the upper-story windows, hands folded in prayer, leaping to their deaths. In less than an hour, 146 of the 600 workers trapped by the March 25, 1911, fire died.
The image of the charred human remains that lined the sidewalk remained fresh in Perkins mind for many years to come. It intensified her growing conviction to improve workplace safety to protect workers.
By the time of the Triangle fire, Perkins had already become a strong advocate of workers rights and protections. Her lifelong conviction began taking root when Perkins was a student at Mount Holyoke College. There, she received an assignment to visit local textile and paper mills to survey the working conditions. Perkins was so appalled by the treacherous conditions, she vowed to help change them. Years later, in her book, "The Roosevelt I Knew," she called the existence of industrial hazards in Americas factories "one of our oldest disgraces."
Perkins experience at Mount Holyoke led her to volunteer among the factory women of Worcester, and later, she accepted a job at Chicago Commons, the famous settlement house. There, she learned more about the ongoing struggle between workers trying to increase their wages and shorten their hours and employers attempting to reduce wages and increase working hours or the intensity of labor.
While working at Chicago Commons, Perkins lived at Hull House, another settlement house that gave her a firsthand opportunity to study the problems of the poor and help find ways to improve their living and working conditions.
In 1907, Perkins returned to the East to become the only paid staff member of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association. The association was formed to help young black women from the South and young white immigrant women from Europe who were arriving in droves to find work, but were often preyed upon or robbed in the process.
In this role, Perkins surveyed the citys rooming houses, improved investigation and counseling methods, and pressured city authorities to enforce stricter lodging house licensing. She issued a report on living and working conditions of young women supporting themselves in a major American city and lobbied for stricter ordinances for rooming house licensing.
Perkins studied economics and sociology at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Finance, then relocated to New York where she accepted a fellowship at the New York School of Philanthropy and enrolled in graduate studies at Columbia University. Pauline Goldmark, head of the School of Philanthropy, had assigned Perkins to survey the Hells Kitchen section of the West Side. In an effort to help a poor family she had visited there, Perkins met with State Sen. Timothy J. MacMannus, who represented the Hells Kitchen section. MacMannus helped Perkins, and in doing so, showed her the value of using the political system to achieve her social goals.
In 1910 Perkins became the secretary of the New York Consumers League, formed to educate workers about harmful industrial conditions and lobby for protective legislation. The leagues national director, Florence Kelly, assigned Perkins to make extensive surveys of unsanitary cellar bakeries and fire safety in industry. Kelly showed Perkins how to search beyond the immediate conditions to find the roots of safety and health problems in industry.
With Kellys mentoring, Perkins became a well-known expert on industrial conditions, and her surveys provided the statistics and necessary information needed to build an effective argument for protective social labor legislation.
Perkins efforts in advancing factory safety led to her appointment as executive secretary of the Committee on Safety, formed as a result of the Triangle fire. She later became a member of the Factory Investigating Commission (FIC), created to review job safety and health conditions in New York.
Perkins took the FIC commissioners to the Cattaraugus County Cannery to see little children snipping beans and shelling peas at 4 a.m. At dawn, the commissioners stood at the gate of a ropeworks watching thousands of exhausted women file out in a zombie-like fashion after working 10 hours through the night. The commissioners also went to the workers homes and heard testimonies of the hardships they experienced while at workmotivating the commissioners to push for stronger legislation. Between 1915 and 1922, they completely rewrote the New York industrial code with 36 new laws protecting workers on the job, restricting the hours women and children could work, and compensating victims of on-the-job injuries.
In 1919, Al Smith, then governor of New York, appointed Perkins as commissioner of the State Industrial Commission. He appointed her to the Industrial Board in 1923, then named her chairman in 1926. Three years later, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected governor and appointed Perkins as the industrial commissioner of New York State. In that role, she acted as directing head of the New York State Department of Labor.
In 1933, Roosevelt was elected U.S. President and offered Perkins an appointment as Secretary of Labor. It was an unprecedented move; never before had a woman served as a Cabinet member. Nonetheless, before accepting Roosevelts offer, Perkins told him, "I dont want to say yes to you unless you know what Id like to do and are willing to have me go ahead and try." She explained her goals: to direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, public works, work hour limitations, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, social security, and revitalized public employment insurance.
Perkins asked him, "Are you sure you want these things done? Because you dont want me for Secretary of Labor if you dont." Without hesitation, Roosevelt agreed to back her, and incorporated most of her goals a part of his New Deal. Perkins accepted the position and served for 12 years, longer than any other Secretary of Labor in U.S. history.
Perkins achievements as Secretary of Labor are legendary. During the first 100 days of the Roosevelt Administration, Congress enacted 15 major laws, and Perkins was the focal point of this activity. During her term, she helped reduce the basic work week to 40 hours, fought for a minimum wage, and helped draft numerous other labor acts.
To help advance workplace safety and health, she established the Departments Division of Labor Standards. It became the first permanent federal agency set up to focus principally on the safety and health of the entire American workforce.
Because most workers were subject to state labor legislation, Perkins focused on the state and local labor laws. She established a committee of representatives from organized labor, business, government, and the safety movement to advise her on ways to improve how these laws were administered and suggest improvements. In response to their suggestions, state labor departments began to offer training for state factory inspectors. The group also worked to increase protective legislation at both the state and federal level concerning job safety and health.
Working through the Division of Labor Standards, Perkins organized a wide range of conferences that encouraged information sharing among the states and ultimately, increased uniformity of state laws and programs.
Much of the divisions work focused on outreach and voluntary compliancestill recognized today as the most effective avenues to workplace protection. The division worked with industry associations and safety organizations to establish voluntary industrial safety codes, and later used this expertise to help develop industrial codes for other federal agencies. It also helped unions establish safety and health programs, provide safety education for workers, and promote better safety and health laws. In turn, the unions helped the division, providing them with lists of hazards in different industries.
The division also helped improve state factory inspections by providing safety courses for factory inspectors and producing an inspection manual. Perkins called on a fellow pioneer in workplace safety and health, Alice Hamilton, who had worked in the Department of Labor under Secretary William Wilson, to return to the department to assist in this effort and conduct industrial hazard investigations.
Many transformations took place during Perkins term as Secretary of Labor. Perhaps her most significant achievements related to workplace safety and health were passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, which allowed the U.S. Public Health Service to fund state industrial health programs; The Walsh-Healy Public Contracts Act of 1936, which banned contract work done under hazardous conditions; and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which prohibited children under 18 from working in hazardous jobs.
Perkins resigned as Secretary of Labor after Roosevelts death in 1945. This was not, however, to be the end of her career. The following year, President Harry Truman appointed her to the Civil Service Commission, where she spent seven years as a commissioner focused on privacy violations on job applications. Perkins ended her government career in 1953 and spent the rest of her life teaching and lecturing at prestigious universities. She continued to lecture until weeks before her death in 1965.
Fifteen years later, the new Department of Labor headquarters at 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C., was named the Francis Perkins Building in honor of her many contributions to Americas workforce.
Former Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtzs tribute couldnt better describe those contributions. He said, "Every man and woman who works at a living wage, under safe conditions, for reasonable hours, or who is protected by unemployment insurance or social security, is her debtor." JSHQ
Xenos served as a summer intern in OSHAs Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C. Judson MacLaury, the Department of Labor historian, and Gordon Berg, a Department of Labor public affairs specialist, contributed to this article.
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The British from Mini will bring the concept that anticipates the future Clubman to the Motor Show in Geneva.
Mini, the BMW owned brand, will undergo a dramatic change. After the new generation of the legendary hatchback called simply "Mini", the British presents a new concept called Clubman, which will be exhibited at the Geneva Motor Show.
The new concept comes with an increased length of 26 inches and a width increased by about 17 inches as compared to the current generation. That translates into a higher level of interior space.
We notice a futuristic interior, inspired by the new hatchback from the Mini, but with some new elements. All analog clocks are replaced by digital displays and clocks showing speed tmp are mounted inside the wheel, as in a conventional car. Beyond that, we have no drastic changes. Let us remember that it's a concept, so the production model will probably not benefit from the same changes.
The tremendous, round focus screen immediately transforms its functions based on upon what the driver is doing, and three flip switches underneath it could be altered to control any function that the driver wishes. A wide, adjusted focus support emphasizes an extensive red flip switch to begin the motor, and a stubby movement lever bested by an expansive, round handle.
Unlike other concepts, we have no assertion about the engines that will equip this new model.

subset: commoncrawl


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Monday, April 25, 2011
Poll on Newland non-candidacy
In an exclusive interview with Decorum Forum, Newland invited readers to provide dialogue for the figures in the non-campaign poster above.
3 comments:
Devil's advocate here . . .
Say you do "fall in to" an endowment for this effort . . would you affiliate with the SD GOP, or maintain your Libertarian alliance?
Given either situation . . what would your platform look like?
Say you were elected by District 30 voters to ascend to Pierre in January . . . what, specifically, do you believe you could accomplish - other than possibly rage against the machine?
From your knowledge of the existing conditions surrounding the two political parties - do you believe the potential exists for a similar minded caucus around your platform?
All this within the understanding that this is a non-candidacy.
- April 25, 2011 at 5:56 PM
- Bob Newland said...
In order to effectively defend against the groundswell that demands I run, I would have to take certain steps in the course of the non-campaign. The surest step in that course wouldn't be not to register as anything but a non-Republican.
Then, as insurance against that not working, and recognizing that one's non-effectiveness in the legislature is largely due to one's financial success in life combined with how much the ladies like him and the gentlemen respect him while he's on the campaign trail, a person looking for non-election might, on the non-campaign trail, say some really outrageous things.
One might not ask, "Other than sign off on a budget so everybody can get paychecks, what has the legislature accomplished of value during your lifetime?"
One might not ask, "Why are we putting people in prison at the rate of five or six a week for hauling marijuana through South Dakota that would never have seen the street in South Dakota?"
One might not state the simple fact that the preceding condition does not prevent anyone who wants good weed in South Dakota from getting good weed at prices comparable to prices elsewhere. One might not suggest there's a better way.
Since almost no one has ever had his mind changed by a logical argument, there's no way I wouldn't suggest any of this in any form of non-candidacy.
Machine? What machine?
Is this non-campaign going negative?
- April 25, 2011 at 6:22 PM
Run, Newland, run!
- April 25, 2011 at 11:59 PM


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Dr. Binu Mani
Orthodontist, Kottayam
Orthodontics, Caritas Hospital, Kottayam
BDS, 2003, A.B Shetty Memorial Institute of Dental Sciences, Mangalore
MDS in Orthodontics & Dentofacial Orthopaedics, 2007, A.B Shetty Memorial Institute of Dental Sciences, Mangalore
Practice Information
Patient Experience
Your participation in the survey will help other patients make informed decisions. You will also be helping Dr. Binu Mani and his staff know how they are doing and how they can improve their services.
How was your experience with Dr. Binu Mani?
Help other patients, and let the doctor know how he's doing
Achievements & Contributions
- Presented Poster In The International Dental Conference (F.D.I) in the year 2004
- Presented Scientific Paper In The Indian Orthodontic Conference "Hard And Soft Tissue
- Presented Poster in the Indian Orthodontic Conference in the year 2005


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Louis-Henri Murger, also known as Henri Murger and Henry Murger (27 March 1822, Paris - 28 January 1861, Paris) was a French novelist and poet.
He is chiefly distinguished as the author of Scènes de la vie de bohème, from his own experiences as a desperately poor writer living in a Parisian attic, and member of a loose club of friends who called themselves "the water drinkers" (because they were too poor to afford wine). In his writing he combines instinct with pathos and humour, sadness his predominant tone. The book is the basis for the operas La Bohème (Puccini) and La bohème (Leoncavallo), and, at greater removes, the zarzuela Bohemios (Amadeu Vives), the operetta Das Veilchen vom Montmartre (Kálmán) and the Broadway musical Rent. He wrote lyrics as well as novels and stories, the chief being La Chanson de Musette, "a tear," says Gautier, "which has become a pearl of poetry".[1]
Murger was the son of a German immigrant to Paris who worked as a tailor and janitor for an apartment building in the Rue Saint Georges. He had a scanty and fragmented education. After leaving school at 15 he worked in a variety of menial jobs before securing one in a lawyer's office. While there he also wrote poetry which came to the attention of the French writer Étienne de Jouy. De Jouy's connections enabled him to secure the position of secretary to Count Tolstoi, a Russian nobleman living in Paris. Murger's literary career began about 1841. His first essays were mainly literary and poetic, but under the pressure of earning a living he wrote whatever he could find a market for, turning out prose as he put it, "at the rate of eighty francs an acre".[2] At one point he edited a fashion newspaper, Le Moniteur de la Mode, and a paper for the millinery trade, Le Castor. His position gradually improved when the French writer Champfleury, with whom he lived for a time, urged Murger to devote himself to fiction. His first big success was Scènes de la vie de bohème. In 1851 Murger published a sequel, Scènes de la vie de jeunesse. Several more works followed, but none of them brought him the same popular acclaim.
He lived much of the next ten years in a country house outside Paris, dogged by financial problems and recurrent ill health. In 1859 he received the Légion d'honneur but within two years he was almost penniless and dying in a Paris hospital. Napoleon III's minister Count Walewsky sent 500 francs to help pay his medical expenses, but it was too late. Henri Murger died on 28 January 1861 at the age of 39. The French government paid for his funeral, which from contemporary accounts in Le Figaro was a great public occasion attended by 250 luminaries from journalism, literature, theatre, and the arts. Le Figaro also started a fund to raise money for his monument. Hundreds of people contributed and within two months it had raised over 6500 francs.[3]
Early in his career, in an effort to make himself appear more "elegant and noticeable", Murger signed his name as "Henry Mürger", the English-looking y and German-looking umlaut both being exotic in French.[4] After experimenting with other variations he eventually kept the former but dropped the latter, so that all of his best-known works were published under the name "Henry Murger".
Henri Murger's literary works include: