MAINE PUBLIC • August 15, 2024
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is in Maine Thursday to consider whether to create a new national monument honoring Frances Perkins. Perkins served as the nation's first female Cabinet member from 1933 to 1945. As labor secretary under President Franklin Roosevelt, Perkins helped to design many of the "New Deal" reforms. Those include the creation of Social Security and the establishment of a federal minimum wage and a 40-hour work week. The Perkins family homestead in Newcastle is already on the national register of historic places. But Haaland is meeting with representatives of the Frances Perkins Center and elected officials to discuss elevating the homestead to national monument status. This weekend, Haaland plans to visit Maine's only other national monument: Katahdin Woods and Waters, to formally open a visitor's center.