President Joe Biden on Monday designated a new national monument in Newcastle, Maine, honoring Frances Perkins, who was the country's first female cabinet secretary.
Perkins was a key architect of some of nation's most sweeping labor laws and reforms. During her 12 years as labor secretary, Perkins was pivotal in bringing about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal reforms that helped the country emerge from the Great Depression — and that continue to affect the American workforce today.
Perkins led the push to standardize the 40-hour work week, to establish Social Security and to create both a federal minimum wage and overtime pay. She is also credited with helping to strengthen child labor laws, ensuring that unionized workers have the right to collectively bargain and creating unemployment insurance.
"The story goes after Franklin Roosevelt asked her to become his labor secretary, Frances Perkins immediately responded by outlining her goals of what she wanted done," Biden said during remarks at the Department of Labor building in Washington that bears Perkins' name. "She said 'I want unemployment relief, overtime pay, child labor laws, minimum wage, workers compensation, national health insurance and Social Security' — many of the benefits we take for granted . . . Can you imagine walking up to Roosevelt and saying, 'Hey, I'll take the job but here's the deal, man.'"
The Perkins homestead now joins Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument as the second national monument in Maine and only the third in New England. National monuments are managed by the National Park Service and are intended to protect sites of historic, cultural or scientific importance.
“President Biden’s designation is a tremendous tribute to Frances Perkins’ extraordinary work and a recognition of Maine’s special place in her life and in our history," Gov. Janet Mills, Maine's first female chief executive, said in a statement. "With this historic designation, the life and legacy one of Maine’s most accomplished public servants and one of our nation’s strongest champions for working people will be forever preserved for the benefit of all future generations.”
Perkins grew up in Massachusetts and lived for many years in New York and the Washington, D.C., area. But she always considered her home to the family's saltwater farm along the Damariscotta River. She spent significant time there throughout her life, including during her 12 years as FDR's point person on carrying out and designing many of his New Deal reforms. She died in 1965 and is buried nearby.
The farm had been in Perkins' family for more than 270 years. As part of the monument designation, the National Park Service will own and manage a 2.3-acre portion of the homestead, including an 1837 brick farmhouse as well as a nearly 200-year-old post-and-beam barn, outbuildings and gardens.
The Frances Perkins Center acquired the 57-acre property from the family several years ago and will continue to own and manage the land outside of the national monument.
“Frances Perkins is one of the most important public servants of the 20th century and she was a woman whose commitment to making lives better for millions of Americans has touched us all," Giovanna Gray Lockhart, executive director of the Frances Perkins Center, said in a statement. "With a national monument designation, not only will she receive the recognition she deserves, but more people will also be able to learn about her work and future generations will be inspired by her steadfastness, intelligence, and courage. This is a proud moment for Maine and the millions of working people in our country.”
Perkins was heavily involved in workers' rights and strengthening labor standards for roughly two decades in New York before agreeing to become FDR's labor secretary in Washington. She was, in part, spurred to her lifelong activism and work by personally witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City's Greenwich Village that killed 146 workers — many of them young, immigrant women who leapt to their deaths because the exit doors had been locked by managers to prevent theft.
Monday's designation is one of multiple additions that Biden has or is expected to make to the National Park Service's landscape of historic and culturally important sites during the final weeks of his presidency. The Frances Perkins national monument is also part of a Biden administration focus on increasing federal recognition of the role that women have played in the nation's history.
More than 5,000 people had previously signed a petition to the administration requesting a national monument designation in Newcastle. That petition was supported by Mills, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and top leaders of the Maine Legislature.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and other officials from the National Park Service visited the Perkins homestead in August. Speaking during Monday's event, Haaland recalled feeling Perkins' presence as she walked through the house still filled with her books, typewriter and multiple hardhats. She credited the Perkins family and the Frances Perkins Center for safeguarding that legacy.
"Today we are here to honor that vision and to bring forward the nation's storyteller, the National Park Service, to help tell her story and steward her homestead," Haaland said.
Exactly how the park service will operate the Perkins site will be fleshed out in the coming months and years. The proclamation signed by Biden directs the park service to develop a management plan on how best to preserve the property and "interpret in its entirely the story of Frances Perkins and the history of the New Deal."
Giovanna Lockhart Gray said the Frances Perkins Center will work with the park service to develop educational programming and tours potentially by this summer.
And Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs with the National Parks Conservation Association, said the park service brings significant benefits in terms of money, resources and expertise in preserving a historic site.
"It means there her legacy will be protected in perpetuity, and that not a guarantee that many historic sites get," Brengel said. "Sometimes historic sites have funding issues, lack of staff. This provides Frances Perkins' legacy going into the future."
Laura Fortman followed in Perkins' footsteps decades later, serving as labor commissioner to Gov. John Baldacci and now Mills. She was also a deputy administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor during the Obama years and as executive director of the Frances Perkins Center.
Fortman said she looks forward to seeing how the monument can help teach the public about how programs that Perkins was instrumental in establishing — like Social Security and unemployment insurance — are part of the safety net often taken for granted today.
"Any time there is a recession, that those are critical programs that people rely on today," Fortman said. "It makes the difference between abject poverty and being able to keep a roof over your head and food on the table."
