Science & Tech Quote by Frances Perkins

Perkins is doing something sly here: she takes the cold phrase "machine civilization" and refuses to romanticize it. America is going industrial whether you like it or not; the real question is whether that machinery grinds people down or forces institutions to grow up. Her "hope" isn’t nostalgia for a pre-factory past, but a wager that modernity can be governed, not merely endured.

The line turns on a moral contrast that’s also a political strategy. "Police methods" is the blunt instrument of the old order: break strikes, intimidate organizers, treat labor conflict as criminality. Against it, she places "conference methods and education" - language that sounds almost meek until you hear the provocation. Conferences mean bargaining, listening, conceding legitimacy to workers and their representatives. Education means training managers, workers, and the public to think in terms of systems and rights rather than force. Perkins is redefining social peace as something you build, not something you impose.

The subtext is New Deal governance in miniature: technocratic in its faith in process, democratic in its insistence that industrial power must be negotiated. As a politician who moved between tragedy (the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire) and policymaking (labor standards, Social Security), Perkins frames reform as a kind of emotional relief - "heartening" - because it signals a shift from crisis management to institution-building. Her intent isn’t to praise civility for its own sake; it’s to normalize the idea that modern capitalism can be civilized only when coercion is replaced by durable, teachable procedures.