President Joe Biden is creating a new national monument in Maine to honor the legacy of a crusader for workers’ rights and the nation’s first female Cabinet secretary.
That is the culmination of a campaign to win that designation for Frances Perkins’ family homestead in Newcastle. Biden on Monday will officially sign a proclamation declaring the property the Frances Perkins National Monument during a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Frances Perkins Building in Washington.
“Honoring Frances Perkins with a national monument does more than acknowledge her work to establish Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage and overtime pay, it is a challenge for us,” acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a statement. “We must all remember that the gains we enjoy today were not gifts, they were hard-fought victories because Frances Perkins dared to believe that workers should thrive and not just survive.”
The property includes a brick house and barns on 57 acres along the Damariscotta River.
Perkins was the country’s first female Cabinet secretary. She served as labor secretary under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Perkins played a critical role in reshaping labor law in the United States, particularly banning child labor, creating Social Security, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage, and instituting a 40-hour workweek.
Before ascending to the national stage, Perkins was an advocate for workers’ rights and served on the commission that investigated the deadly 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 workers, many of whom were young women and some of whom jumped several floors to their deaths to escape the flames.
The building had only one fire escape, which collapsed during efforts to rescue the workers, and managers had locked the doors inside to prevent theft but also prevented workers from escaping.
Over the summer, the nonprofit that manages the property, Frances Perkins Center, collected signatures for a petition urging Biden to use his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to declare the homestead a national monument. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark on Aug. 25, 2014.
The campaign had support from various Maine politicians, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, independent U.S. Sen. Angus King and state Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, who sits on the center’s board.
In a July 31 letter to Biden, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said a national monument designation would ensure Perkins’ legacy and accomplishments are “recognized and celebrated.”
“Maine is honored to count Frances Perkins as one of our own, and we would be honored to have a new national monument in her honor,” Mills wrote.
