Frances Perkins: A Woman Unafraid

Today – June 25 – is the day the landmark legislation, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, was passed. Initially it applied to eleven million workers and restricted child labor, established minimum wage, and gradually limited the workweek to forty hours.  “Everybody claimed credit for it,” Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor,  wrote later. “I cannot remember whether the President and I claimed credit, but we always  thought we had done it.”