No Kitchen Cabinet This

Frances Perkins Becomes Secretary of Labor

Abstract

Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office as the thirty-second President of the United States on Saturday, March 4, 1933. The same day he called the U.S. Senate into a special session to consider his ten nominees for his cabinet. In just 24 minutes, the Senate confirmed all ten. Among them was Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor.¹

At the date of the featured document, the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression. It was the worst and longest economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world, lasting from the end of 1929 until the early 1940s. The Great Depression was characterized by severe and rapid declines in the production and sale of goods and a sudden and severe rise in unemployment. Businesses and banks closed their doors, people lost their jobs, homes, and savings, and many depended on charity to survive.