The Courage to Meddle: Gallery

In August and September 2019 Tom drove over 2,000 miles around New York State, Massachusetts and Maine to find out more about the subject of the book, Frances Perkins. Except where stated these are his photos of that journey (the 3 Triangle Fire photos were taken in New York in 2013).

Frances is one of over 200 women remembered at Seneca Falls, at the museum which marks the birth of the Women’s Rights Movement in America, 1848 (p viii)

The Frances Perkins Carnegie Library in Worcester, Mass. Worcester was her childhood home (p viii)

Letchworth Park is 20 miles of conserved beauty. The ‘Green Grand Canyon’ was a CCC project from 1933 (p ix)

A monument to the 3,000 men who worked for CCC at Letchworth Park, 1933-41 (p ix)

The brick house in Newcastle, Maine, has been in the Perkins family for generations and is now owned by the Frances Perkins Center (p1)

The Frances Perkins Center is located in Damariscotta, Maine (p1)

Mount Holyoke College for women, where Frances studied, 1898-1902 (p3)

Mount Holyoke has helped more than 1,000 women from non-traditional backgrounds into higher education on Frances Perkins Scholarships (p3)

Frances (front row, hands clasped), listens to Teddy Roosevelt, c1906 (p3) (personal collection of Christopher Breiseth)

Toynbee Hall, London, where the settlement house movement started, a movement which made Frances the woman she was through intellectual stimulation and first hand contact with the poverty and injustice that she pledged to address. She visited Toynbee Hall on at least one occasion (p7)

Frances wrote ‘People at Work’ in 1934 (p11)

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, as witnessed by Frances Perkins, is now a national monument (p23)

146 died in the fire on 25th March 1911 (p23)

The plaques on the Asch/Brown Building commemorate the Triangle fire. It’s close to where Frances lived at the time (p23) and the square where Elizabeth Warren gave a speech dedicating her 2020 campaign in Frances’ memory (p x)

The fabulous NY State Capitol in Albany (missing its dome), where Al Smith (1918-20, 1922-28) and then Franklin Roosevelt (1928-32) both employed Frances as an Industrial Commissioner (p28)

When Teddy Roosevelt won the Governorship in 1909, pledging that spending on the Capitol had to stop, it did – leaving detailed sculptures forever incomplete (p28)

The NY State Assembly room in Albany, where Frances first saw and met Al Smith in 1909 – ‘It’s a pity he’s a Tammany man’ (p28)

The Factory Investigating Commission reports, 1912 (three volumes) and 1914 – with ‘Frances’ fingerprints all over it’ (p31)

Frances’ marriage announcement, in the Mt Holyoke archive (‘1902’, added later, is her graduation year) (p38)

The Rome Manufacturing Company (copper and brass) is no more. Frances resolved an industrial dispute here in 1919 (p49)

Rome NY used to be the copper capital of America (p49)

A map of Rome in the 1920s(?) showing the copper manufacturing area south of Railroad Street (to the right of ‘2’) and the parallel streets of Little Italy to the north (the southern ‘1’). Only one bridge over the Mohawk River joins the area to the town (which is largely to the northwest). The site of Fort Stanwix is shown as ’21’ and the State Barge Canal was opened in 1919 to replace the Erie Canal (Governor Clinton’s Ditch) (‘Erie Boulevard East’ on this map) (p49)

Rome’s copper mills in their prime , from the air, from the north (photo property of Rome Archives) (p49)

Rome’s renegade copper mill owner , James Spargo, lived here on North George Street (p49)

Spargo’s offices have now found a new purpose (p49)

More evidence of the conflict in Rome, NY – courtesy of the Rome City Archives (p49)

The Roosevelts at home, FDR Museum, Hyde Park, NY (p65)

Allied war leaders FDR and Churchill face each other, with a sculpture made from the Berlin Wall between them. FDR Museum and Archive, Hyde Park, NY (p65)

Frances’ protege John Winant briefs FDR. Photo from FDR Museum and Archive (p161)

14th August 1935, the Social Security Act is signed into law by Franklin Roosevelt. Behind each shoulder are the dark suited Sen. Robert Wagner and Frances Perkins. A day to remember…(p186)

Only a cardboard cut out, unfortunately… but Frances’ grandson Tomlin Coggeshall is human! (p190)

Christopher Breiseth holds a rare copy of the portrait of FDR that was being painted on the day he died in 1945 (p227)

America remembered Frances Perkins on what would have been her 100th birthday, in 1980 (p233)

Telluride House, Cornell University, where Frances was based for her last five years (1960-65) and Christopher Breiseth was chair of the Telluride residents (p233)

One of the 11 frames of this artwork on the dignity of work features Frances. In 2011 the painting prompted the Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, to have the entire piece removed because it portrayed ‘that Communist woman’.
She can also be distinguished in Roosevelt’s Cabinet (top of the picture) whilst Rose Schneiderman is behind the lectern on the right of the picture (p234)

The State Museum in Augusta, Maine now proudly portrays the complete and renovated artwork in all its glory, even if the three repainted panels (9, 10, 11, on the right) are slightly smaller than the originals (p234)

The ‘888’ monument in Melbourne, Australia, celebrates the goal of 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep and 8 hours family time in the working day, erected by trade unionists in 1903 (p280)

St Andrew’s Church, Damariscotta, Maine; Frances’ lifetime spiritual home (p234)

The icon honouring Frances, a saint of the American Episcopal Church, in St Andrew’s.
Her Saints day is May 13th (p234)

A simple grave in Newcastle, Maine (p238)