The Road to Character

In this chapter, the persistent theme of humility manifests in Perkins’ case study as an all-consuming call to action. Rather than see another devastating fire caused by dangerous work conditions affect the lives of New York’s poor, specifically women and immigrants, she shed the genteel expectations of her social class to throw herself headlong into vocal, tireless, often abrasive activism that led to her eventually serving as the US Secretary of Labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Brooks states, “In [Perkins’] method, you don’t ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does Life Want from Me? What are my circumstances calling me to do?” (21). Perkins was raised for a life of comfort and luxury, for marriage to a wealthy businessman who would expect her to be meek and demure. However, she put herself on the line and often in harm’s way to advocate for the oppressed. When her husband and daughter struggled with mental illness, she selflessly supported and cared for them, often working jobs that did not pay nearly enough to make ends meet. She was the epitome of self-sacrifice and tenacity.

While Perkins looms large as the central character, the nameless employees who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire make as much of an impact on the narrative, if not more. The eyewitness accounts of Perkins and others tell of selfless acts undertaken in the victims’ last moments, from a young man who helped several of his female colleagues step up onto a windowsill to jump, to some survivors who managed to help a precious few others evacuate. Perkins’ mentors and colleagues, as well as her mentees later in life from when she taught at Cornell, stand as a testament to the forces that created her and the impact that she, in turn, went on to make upon others.

The backdrop for most of these crucial, formative events throughout Perkins’ life is largely the Eastern Seaboard—from Boston, where she was born, to New York City, where her life as an activist began, to Washington DC, where her career in politics kept her for much of her middle age. New York City is the dominant landscape against which so many of these crucial, character-building events in Perkins’ life take place, and there are few locations like large cities for showing the diversity of mankind and the circumstances under which visionaries like Perkins are most desperately needed. Despite New York having a reputation for a place where someone can gain fame and recognition if they make enough of an impact, Perkins was selfless and tireless in her outreach, never demanding center stage for her accomplishments.