This article appeared during the opening weeks of Roosevelt’s first term administration announcing that the new president was taking a novel approach in granting various appointments to government positions of leadership by selecting numerous women who had proved their mettle in the fiery furnace of 1920s Democratic party politics.
Indeed, the women named were all well-known and of hardy stock, such as Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman governor of Wyoming, Ruth Bryan Owen, who was the first congresswoman to represent Florida and Francis Perkins who had served the president in good stead as his industrial commissioner during his days as the Governor of New York. Ross was appointed as the Director of the U.S. Mint, she stood at that post until 1953. FDR appointed Owen to serve as the ambassador to Denmark. Perkins, pictured on the right, would serve for twelve years in the cabinet as Labor Secretary. She is remembered as the first woman to ever serve in the cabinet of any U.S. president and the first woman to be named in the line of succession to the chief executive.
1924 was a very important year for American women in politics…
