In my last column, I remembered a tragic event in American history, the Triangle Waist Company fire, a disaster that claimed the lives of 148 garment workers on March 25, 1911, in New York City. I wrote the column as a result of a conversation with a lady I met whose late aunt had survived the horrific tragedy.

The fire would influence Alfred Emanuel Smith, who would be elected Governor of New York, Senator Robert Wagner of New York, who would sponsor legislation for the Welfare and Safety of America's Workers, and the Social Security Act, David Dubinsky who would help organize workers into the International Garment Workers Union.

A young woman who witnessed the tragedy would later become a presidential cabinet member. Do you recall the first women to hold a cabinet position?

Her name Francis Perkins. She was born in Boston in 1880 in a family descended from a long line of farmers and craftsmen. The family had strong religious beliefs.

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she studied economic history and was moved by Jacob Riis's book "How the Other Half Lives," an expose of life in the New York slums.

She volunteered to assist in settlement houses, where she learned about dangerous factory conditions, desperate workers, low wages, workplace injuries and the lack of adequate medical care.

Imagine this! She lobbied the state of New York legislature to limit the workweek for women and children to 54 hours. Remember, in 1910, women did not have suffrage (the right to vote). Who would listen to a woman in 1910?

On March 25, 1911, her life was changed forever. On that day she stood on the sidewalk across from the Triangle Waist Company garment factory where the tragic fire occurred. She saw women, their hands clasped in prayer, jumping from the eighth floor of the building as all exits were locked and the elevator was inoperable. This moved her heart and soul.

"It seared on my mind as well as my heart – a never-to-be-forgotten reminder of why I had to spend my life fighting conditions that could permit such a tragedy," she said later.

Perkins witnessed many labor problems in the garment industry. She strove to have legislation passed to right industrial wrongs.

In 1926 Gov. Al Smith appointed Perkins as the first female member of the New York State Industrial Commission. Perkins would have to earn respect the hard way by proving she possessed the motivation and ability to get things done. One great accomplishment was to reduce the workweek for women to 48 hours in New York state.

In 1933 Perkins became a benchmark for women's rights when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her as secretary of labor, the first woman to hold a cabinet position.

"I came to Washington to serve God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten working men," she said.

The years of the Great Depression had laid the foundation for many American worker benefits, the right to organize unions, Social Security with a minimum of $10 a month to a maximum of $85 a month and a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour for workers producing goods for interstate commerce.

Perkins believed negotiations and collective bargaining were the tools to be utilized to settle labor disputes.

Her tenure as secretary of labor ended in 1944, making her the longest appointed secretary of labor in U.S. history. Later President Harry Truman appointed her to the Civil Service Commission.

In the last years of her life, Perkins was a professor of labor relations at Cornell University.

The lifelong fighter for the rights of the American worker died at the age of 85 in 1965. A pioneer for women, she championed much of the legislation that protects workers today.

Another thank you to my "always" photographer Larry Oberly, an Internet man, for his assistance in preparing these columns.

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In two weeks we will be spending months in a unique hamlet in the Lehigh Valley.