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September 13, 2002
Gift
to Archives Sheds Light on Labor Leader Frances Perkins
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This
note is one of the five documents written by Frances Perkins
that were recently donated to the College archives.
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From
love affairs, addictions, and family scandals, to religious practices,
pets, and exercise routines, the personal habits and social lives
of political leaders fill news reports and best-selling memoirs.
But exposés and confessions are a relatively new media
phenomenon, says MHC Archives Librarian Patricia Albright, and
were not the norm when Frances Perkins, class of 1902, served
under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as secretary of labor from
1933 to 1945, the first female Cabinet member in U.S. history.
In that office and in her other public positions, Perkins revealed
little about her private life, says Albright, and scant personal
information was reported by journalists or biographers. Her papers
at Mount Holyoke, Columbia University, the National Archives,
the Department of Labor, and other repositories seldom reflect
aspects of her personal life, especially her relationship with
her husband. Thanks to a collection of privately held papers recently
donated to Mount Holyoke’s Archives and Special Collections,
researchers now have a fuller picture of Perkins, including glimpses
of her deep Christian faith, loyalty to the Mount Holyoke community,
and devotion to her husband, who spent much of the twenty-three
years of their marriage hospitalized for depression.
The collection, given
this summer by Sheila Bodine, granddaughter of Florence Polk Holding,
class of 1902, consists of a 1902 commencement program, a zoology
notebook filled with Holding’s meticulous sketches, correspondence
between Holding and family members, and biographical information
on Holding, who published articles and poetry, exhibited artwork,
studied music, and, as a fervent advocate of higher education,
served on the West Chester State Teacher’s College board
of trustees. It also includes five letters from Holding’s
friend and classmate Frances Perkins, which Albright says greatly
enhance the College’s holdings on its most famous champion
of labor reform.
Several of the letters
from Perkins to Holding ("Dot") reference visits or
upcoming class reunions, with Perkins anticipating seeing her
good friend and requesting help creating fun reunion events for
their classmates. In one letter, Perkins praises two of Holding’s
published writings, "Another Famous Mount Holyoke Husband,"
which was an Alumnae Quarterly article about Owen Roberts,
husband of classmate Betty Rogers Roberts, class of 1902, and
Oiseaux de Passage (1932), a book about two summers of
travel in the Fontainebleau region of France. Perkins also thanks
Holding for kind words about her own book, The Roosevelt I
Knew, and confirms that she had no shadow writer. She writes,
"A look at the book would show, by internal evidence, that
I wrote it myself. It is in my own conversational style, worse
luck, and is really so badly written that no professional writer
could have
done it."
In a handwritten note
dated November 27, 1935, Perkins offers sympathy on the death
of Holding’s husband, Archibald, saying "You are often
in my mind old dear. I hope that you are finding a way of adjustment
and endurance as the months go on. Have courage old dear &
hunt for the compensations. There must be some somewhere."
In a letter dated March 9, 1953, Perkins discusses the death of
her own husband, Paul Caldwell Wilson, thanking Holding for her
condolences and expressing relief that Paul "remained a true
believer" despite "all the troubles he has had."
Perkins writes,
"He died in the faith of the Church, received the Last Sacraments
and was buried with all the warmth and hope with which the Church
surrounds us at the time of our great transition; greeted by the
Saints, the Prophets and the Patriarchs; escorted by the Angels
and the Guardians, surely we go to our Paradise in love and mercy."
In this same letter, Perkins also comments on the need for political,
economic, and spiritual diversity in the U.S., calling such diversity
"the genius of America." Such views were not common,
especially for anyone who was or had been associated with politics,
says Albright, noting that in March 1953 the country was in the
midst of the Joseph McCarthy witch-hunt for "Communists."
The letters are significant
because they balance the skewed personal profile presented by
the media, says Albright. "Perkins was guarded with the press
and wary of interviews. As a result, she was depicted as a stern,
reserved, serious, and unsmiling person or trivialized with headlines
such as, ‘Boston Girl First Woman Cabinet Member,’ ‘Frances
Perkins Given New Hat,’ and ‘Fighting Schoolma’am:
Cabinet Minister Challenges the Big Industrialists: She Wears
a Hat for 16 Hours a Day.’ Perkins’s letters to Holding,
which express warmth, humor, and devotion, reveal the woman who
was affectionately called ‘Perk’ at Mount Holyoke, where
she was a popular and respected student, class president, loyal
alumna, and committed trustee."
A description of the
Florence Polk Holding papers is available at www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/arch/col/ms0790r.htm.
A description of the Frances Perkins papers is available at www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/arch/col/ms0632r.htm.
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