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It is no accident that the resurgence of Labor coincides with the presence in the Cabinet of its first woman, and she in the Labor Department. In Madam Secretary Perkins is concentrated all the philosophy of the New Deal and most of its instinctive sympathy for the working man. Early & late she has served as his able, articulate spokesman around the Cabinet table, before Congressional committees, at NRA hearings, on the stump. For the first time in years the working man may feel that there is a trained mind functioning for him in Washington. Gone are the easy platitudes of the politician; Miss Perkins speaks the idiom of the advanced welfare worker, the scientific sociologist.
By political tradition the Labor portfolio since its creation in 1913 has gone to union men. President Wilson first appointed Pennsylvania's fat, florid William Bauchop Wilson, an oldtime walking delegate. President Harding put in Pennsylvania's stubby, back-slapping James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis who retained his card as an organized steel worker and spent much public time promoting the Loyal Order of Moose. President Hoover picked William Nuckles Doak, a heavy-handed member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.
When President Roosevelt selected not only a woman but one without any labor affiliations for the bottom place in his Cabinet, the A. F. of L. squawked a loud protest. Declared Mr. Green: "The Secretary of Labor should be representative of labor, one who understands labor, labor's problems, labor's psychology, collective bargaining, industrial relations. . . . Labor can never become reconciled to the selection made."