A hero to American workers.

The woman behind the New Deal.

A trailblazer with a foundational impact on the American workplace.

A shining example to young women nationwide.

A visionary policymaker.

These are but a handful of recent tributes by public figures to Frances Perkins, America’s first female presidential Cabinet member, who’s in renewed limelight right now for a very good reason: a handsomely supported push to have President Biden designate a national monument in her name and memory. The move has this editorial board’s unreserved and enthusiastic support.

Perkins, who served as labor secretary for 12 years of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency – longer than any appointee to date – was born to Maine parents (her mother from Bethel, her father from Newcastle) in 1880. The family homestead to which she returned every summer, spanning 57 picturesque acres on the Damariscotta River, would become a national park as part of President Biden’s commitment to better recognizing women’s transformational contributions to “the American story” – contributions all too often forgotten or downplayed.

How often? Of more than 400 sites currently operated by the National Park Service, 12 are dedicated to women’s history or to a woman – that’s fewer than 3%. Perkins, whose political trajectory would be impressive in this decade, to say nothing of the 1930s, would surely be appalled by this statistic.

The best way of understanding the depth and breadth of Perkins’ social and public policy legacy is to see how simply it can be summed up. This was not a lawmaker preoccupied with technicalities or incremental change. No part of the workplace or the labor market, as we know it today, seems to have avoided her careful and compassionate attention. Indeed, the reform achieved during her tenure is unrivaled by anything that’s happened since. The national headquarters of the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., is, rightly, the Frances Perkins Building.

“If you had a weekend, you can thank Frances Perkins,” Stephanie Dray, a writer who researched Perkins extensively for her historical fiction novel “Becoming Madam Secretary,” told this newspaper in August. “If you or anyone you ever loved has collected Social Security benefits, you can thank her. If you’re a child who got to go to school instead of to work in a factory, you can thank her. She’s just everywhere around us.”

The federal minimum wage. Federal unemployment insurance. Workers’ right to organize protected. But wait, there’s more.

A 2021 report by then-Press Herald features writer Bob Keyes lays out her blazing of the proverbial trail, well beyond the professional realm, thus: “When she married in 1913, she insisted on keeping her birth name, unusual at that time. Her husband suffered a manic depressive episode, lost the family’s money in a scam investment, and could not work. She supported the family, becoming a labor advocate and policy expert. She also had a long-term private relationship – a so-called ‘Boston marriage,’ involving the cohabitation of two women – during some of her time in Washington. When the media refers to Pete Buttigieg as the first ‘openly gay’ member of a presidential cabinet, ‘openly’ is an opaque reference, at least to Perkins, whose relationship with another woman was not open at the time and is now recognized.”

Let’s recognize all of that and more. In an election year, with squabbling over national priorities and values at a fever pitch, there’s an element of urgency to this bid. A 2025 Republican administration strikes us as highly unlikely to pick up the Biden-Harris administration’s women’s history baton (or its conservation baton). Aggressive rollback of these efforts and others, in fact, is what we all have to be braced for.

Perkins, whose tireless, fearless work fundamentally changed the lives of workers, left the Department of Labor on a rallying note. It cuts through as brightly today as it did back then. “There is always a large horizon,” she said on her way out. “There is much to be done … I am not going to be doing it! It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.”

A program of human betterment for all time. A national monument in Maine for all time. And a fitting reminder to all of us, and generations to come, that there is much to do – and that it’s up to us to do it.