Abstract
The pathway to Frances Perkins’s career in social work and government combines empirical observation and scientific method with quirky pragmatism and personal commitment. The era before social work practice is codified stamps both Perkins’s mode of work and the New Deal’s “temper [of] bold, persistent experimentation” [Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, May 22, 1932]. This chapter outlines Perkins’ personal history, ranging from her initial encounters with poverty to her reading of Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, which inspires her to do something about the poor. Perkins’s experiences in Chicago’s Hull House, Philadelphia Research and Protective Association, and National Consumers League, in addition to her investigation of the Triangle Fire, prepare her to help shape New York State and national government and the New Deal.
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Notes
Naomi Pasachoff, Frances Perkins: The Coming of the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 14.
Penny Coleman, A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins (New York: Asja Press, 2010), p. 11.
Adam Cohen, Nothing To Fear (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), p. 163.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age Of Roosevelt, Volume I, 1919–1933: The Crisis of the Old Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957), p. 22.
Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Minimum Wage (New York, Random House, 2009), p. 19.
Steven Diner, “Scholarship in the Quest for Social Welfare: A Fifty-Year History of the Social Service Review,” Social Service Review, 51:1 (March, 1977): 2–3.
Frances Perkins, “A Method of Moral Progress,” New Republic, 129:8 (June 8, 1953): 18–19.
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© 2016 Stephen Paul Miller
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Miller, S.P. (2016). Bold, Persistent Social Work. In: The New Deal as a Triumph of Social Work: Frances Perkins and the Confluence of Early Twentieth Century Social Work with Mid-Twentieth Century Politics and Government. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527813_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527813_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-70785-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52781-3
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