Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal

National Recovery > The New Deal

Frances Perkins

Proof of “Frances Perkins Explains the New Deal”

New York, Pictorial Review, March 1934

Frances Perkins Papers, Box 47

Writing “‘Depression’ is a word of despair. ‘Recovery’ is a word of hope,” Perkins here states: “The election of the fall of 1932 … was a vote against the depression – a bewildered people … voted overwhelmingly for what they called a ‘New Deal.’ And by that they meant apparently exactly what the term meant in its original card-playing sense in a different arrangement of trumps and aces in different hands.”

Gift of Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins

Speech of Secretary of Labor Perkins on Planned Recovery

Typescript with autograph corrections, Washington,

11 December 1933

Frances Perkins Papers, Box 46

This is the text of a radio address on the National Recovery Act delivered by Perkins at 10:45 p.m. on Monday, December 11, 1933. Note her emphasis of “living wage” by underlining the word “living” in paragraph three.

Gift of Frances Perkins

National Association of Manufacturers

Chart #1 of a series on the “Industrial Recovery Bill”

Broadside, New York, May 24, 1933

Frances Perkins Papers, Box 75

This chart of Senate Bill No. 1712 and HR Bill No. 5664, 73rd Congress, 1st Session, shows clearly the two-part nature of the “National Industrial Recovery Act:” the “Mobilization of Industry into Trade Associations,” and “A Huge $3,300,000,000 Program of Public-Works Construction.” The program would be administered by the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA).

Gift of Frances Perkins

National Recovery Administration

Bulletin No. 1 – 3

Washington: Government Printing Office, 1933

Frances Perkins Papers, Box 75

Gift of Frances Perkins

 

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