Madam Secretary

Of all the game in the Roosevelt preserve, Secretary of Labor Perkins has been most frequently chased, most savagely harried. Last week the pack was after her again.

Beating around and through the bush of recent labor-management scuffles, critics had flushed out a scapenannygoat, the Labor Secretary. Congressmen bayed on her trail. Washington wags cracked: the only reason she still holds office is that the President is too much of a gentleman to ask a lady for her seat.

Chief criticism of Frances Cora ("Ma") Perkins when she first took office, eight years ago, was that she wore skirts and a tricorn bonnet, instead of trousers and a derby. Boston-born, Mount Holyoke-bred, she had a record of passionate social-welfare work and conscientious service to New York as a member of industrial boards and as the State's industrial commissioner. She had been responsible for progressive State legislation. She had swept up many dirty corners. First thing she did when she walked into her musty old office in Washington was to call for a dustcloth.

As the first woman Cabinet member she was on a spot. The press looked for color, found none. She told them tartly: "We New Englanders like to keep ourselves to ourselves." Instead of answering questions, she lectured. Labor was antagonistic from the start. A.F. of L. President William Green, angry because Roosevelt had not appointed A.F. of L. Wheel Horse Dan Tobin to the job, huffed: "Labor will never be reconciled to her appointment." Congressmen did not like her or her social worker's ways.

Through it all she has had the support of Franklin Roosevelt, which was more important to her than Congressional or public popularity. Mutual friends explain that Mr. Roosevelt is used to dominant women who talk a lot, that he understands Madam Perkins, that they think alike, that she is unquestionably a brilliant woman. To her belongs credit for much New-Deal legislation.

She has administered the fact-finding agencies of her department, the children's bureau, the women's bureau, with fine, earnest competence. The Department's Conciliation Service has functioned with more success than is generally credited to it. In 1940, its 110 conciliators intervened in 1,568 threatening situations, averted strikes in 95% of them. The year before, the Service was successful in 93% of its cases. But that success was due less to Ma Perkins than to such able men as Chief Conciliator John R. Steelman and, before him, to Assistant Secretary Edward F. McGrady.

In dealing with labor strife, almost from the start, Madam Secretary gave her critics their best excuse for attacking her. To Welfare Worker Perkins, labor was the emaciated wife of a brutal husband, and Ma Perkins was the community nurse rushing to the rescue. She salved labor's hurts. She squashed her tricorn hat down on her head and shook her finger at big, bullying business. She tried to settle the General Motors sit-down strike in 1937 with Biblical injunctions. When she failed to get an agreement, she flew into womanly fury.

Since labor relations became suddenly as vital as procurement of materials and the drafting of men into military service, Secretary Perkins has been more than ever on the spot. The Labor Secretary was jealous of her office and its prerogatives, fought every effort to encroach on them. The present Mediation Board, tardily created five weeks ago, has invaded her private domain, but before the board can swing into action Madam Perkins has to step aside--admitting, in effect, that she has failed.

She was criticized for dawdling in the Allis-Chalmers wrangle, although her explanation was that she had certification papers almost ready when Knox & Knudsen interfered. As the soft-coal tie-up stretched into its third week (see p. 74), with steel plants reporting that they were shutting down furnaces because of a coal shortage, Madam Perkins heard the same kind of criticism. She made appeals first to one side, then the other. In Manhattan, John L. Lewis and the Northern operators, who had agreed on a new $7-a-day wage, sat on their haunches. Southern operators walked out, refusing to pay more than $6.21. Madam Perkins wired the Northern operators and Lewis' United Mine Workers a "request" to go back to work, reopen at least some of the nation's soft-coal mines, and negotiate further with the Southerners, and begged the Southerners to return to conference.

Lewis refused point-blank to let his United Mine Workers go back"to work until the Southerners signed a contract, but said he would be glad to talk it over if the Southerners would return to Manhattan. The Southerners refused to budge from Washington. Madam Perkins was frustrated. But at week's end she had still not certified the strike to the Mediation Board. What was the use, she asked, when one of the parties (Lewis) refused to be mediated? Forced to take over, Franklin Roosevelt this week urged mines and negotiations reopened, in the public interest. Perhaps the real cause of her failure to get results was that she did not wear a derby and smoke cigars.

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