From Crisis to Change: Frances Perkins on Lasting Leadership

​Every leader faces problems. The test isn’t only how we react, but also how we prevent the problem from recurring. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the worst workplace disaster of her time, shows us how to lead in both moments.

​Frances Perkins isn’t a name many will recognize, but the impact of her leadership is woven into every American life. As FDR’s Secretary of Labor—the first woman ever to serve in a U.S. Cabinet—she was directly instrumental in establishing our social security system, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour-workweek, and child labor laws. Affectionately calling her the “architect of the New Deal’s social safety net,” Roosevelt trusted her to map out details, negotiate compromises, and shepherd this legislation through Congress.

But Perkins’s national leadership began long before she entered FDR’s Cabinet. As a young reformer in New York City, she witnessed a tragedy that galvanized her mission and forged in her two types of leadership that define every great leader: responsive leadership and transformative leadership.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. On a spring afternoon in 1911, Perkins was visiting with friends in Greenwich Village when the sounds of fire engines filled the air. Following the crowd rushing across Washington Square Park, Perkins arrived at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory as its upper floors erupted into flames.

Her horror was immediate. The doors had been locked from the outside, trapping the workers in with the flames. Those who’d been able to reach the fire escapes from windows fell to their deaths as they collapsed beneath the weight of bodies, and young women, many with their clothing on fire, dangled from 8th and 9th floor windows before plummeting to the sidewalk below. In just 18 minutes, 146 lives were gone.

Leading in the Moment. In the days following the Triangle fire, New York was in shock. Families stood in long lines to identify the remains of their loved ones, and newspapers printed graphic accounts of young women choosing to fall to their deaths rather than burn alive. Public grief quickly boiled into anger. Citizens demanded justice, and legislators scrambled to calm their outrage before the city unraveled. Perkins immediately set into action. As part of her reform work, she’d spent months documenting unsafe factory conditions. She’d seen locked doors and faulty fire escapes before.

The Triangle fire was the very disaster she’d long warned against, and proof that reform could not wait. She carried her research into meeting halls and settlement houses, standing before civic groups and lawmakers to insist this tragedy was the direct result of conditions she’d long documented: locked doors, broken fire escapes, overcrowded rooms, and lack of sprinkler systems. Her calm authority gave focus to public fear and outrage, and her expertise turned paralysis into a practical agenda.

​Changing the System. By June, the Legislature created the Factory Investigating Commission and invited Perkins to serve as an expert. She inspected factories across New York, interviewed workers, and presented lawmakers with hard evidence of negligence and danger.

At Triangle, workers were trapped because exits were bolted shut from the outside, and Perkins’s investigations revealed factories across New York engaged in this same practice. She immediately pushed legislation requiring factory doors to remain unlocked while workers were present, and to swing outward for quick escape. She fought for safer fire escapes, multiple emergency exits, limits on room occupancy, and mandatory fire drills.

When she campaigned for sprinkler systems, factory owners argued the water would damage their fabric stock. Using evidence from her inspections, Perkins showed the Commission that many factory owners had already installed sprinklers in their warehouses to protect their inventory, but not in their factories where people worked. When fire experts testified that sprinklers “in all probability would have prevented the loss of life” during the Triangle fire, Perkins made it impossible to deny that human beings deserved at least the same protection as bolts of cloth. Within two years, New York passed a law requiring automatic sprinkler systems in all factories over seven stories.

The Lesson for Today’s Leaders. Perkins’s legacy reminds us that great leadership
requires we consider both the short and long-term needs of our teams. First we address the
problem before us, and then we build the systems that prevent it from recurring. Responsive
leadership may steady the moment, but transformative leadership secures the future.

Are you leading through change and hitting unseen resistance? Let us help you lead through the uncertainty with tools to reframe and build momentum. You bring the challenge, and we’ll bring the leadership lessons to help you succeed.