Partner Pauline M. Newman
Queer Places:
Bryn Mawr College (Seven Sisters), 101 N Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
299 W 12th St, New York, NY 10014
Frieda
Segelke Miller (April 16, 1889 - July 21, 1973) was the economics instructor
at Bryn Mawr College and labor activist. She was the Industrial Commissioner
of New York from 1938 to 1943 and the director of the United States Women's
Bureau from 1944 to 1953. Miller (Milwaukee-Downer College, A.B., 1911) was a
labor administrator and official. She was appointed director of the Division
of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage at the New York State Dept. of Labor in
1929. In 1938 she was appointed Industrial Commissioner of New York, from 1943
to 1944 she was Special Assistant on Labor to the U.S. ambassador in London,
and from 1944 to 1953 she was director of the Women's Bureau. She then worked
for the International Labour Organisation conducting surveys of working
conditions and opportunities for women and children in Asia and the Middle
East, represented the International Alliance of Women at the United Nations
from 1957 to 1958, and was United Nations representative in the International
Union for Child Welfare, a European organization, until 1967. Miller adopted a
daughter in 1923 and for many years lived in New York City with labor union
official Pauline Newman.
Frieda
Segelke Miller was born on April 16, 1889, at La Crosse, Wisconsin, the
daughter of James Gordon Miller, a lawyer, and Erna Segelke. Her parents died
when Miller was young, and Frieda and her sister Elsie went to live with their
grandmother, Augusta Segelke.
Miller attended Milwaukee-Downer College (later
Lawrence University), Milwaukee, Wisconsin, B.A. in 1911; she then
spent four years doing graduate work in economics, sociology, political
science, and law as a fellow of the University of Chicago, but did not
complete a degree. In 1940 she was
awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Russell Sage
College.
In 1916 Frieda S. Miller
became a social economic instructor at Bryn Mawr College.
299 W 12th St
In 1917 she served as secretary of the Trade Union College in Philadelphia
and taught classes in economics there.
After World War I, Miller and her then partner
Pauline Newman were
commissioned by the U.S. Departments of State and Labor to investigate postwar
factory conditions in Austria, England and Germany.
In 1920 Miller took part at the United States House of
Representatives elections to select members in the 67th Congress of the
United States. She was part of the Pennsylvania's at-large congressional
district but did not win.
In 1929 Frances
Perkins appointed Miller as director of the Division of Women in Industry
and Minimum Wage at the New York State Department of Labor; Miller was
instrumental in the passage of New York's Minimum Wage Law for Women and
Minors in 1933. In 1938 Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed Miller as
Industrial Commissioner of New York, the second woman commissioner after
Perkins, a post she held until 1943 when she left to become special assistant
for labor to John C. Winant, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
As
early as 1936 Miller had begun representing the United States at
International Labor Organization conferences.
From 1944 to 1953 Frieda S. Miller was the director of the United States
Women's Bureau. Her major responsibility was the reintegration of women into
the economy after their displacement by veterans returning to their pre-war
jobs. She conducted studies to examine labor laws and vocational improvements
in the conditions of women in the labor force. In 1948, through the Women's
Bureau, she published ''The American Woman'' and in 1951 ''Older Women
Workers''. Appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Miller left the
Women's Bureau in 1953 at the request of President Dwight Eisenhower.
During the 1950s and 1960s Miller focused on international labor issues.
After leaving the Women's Bureau she went to work full-time for the
International Labor Organization and conducted several major surveys in Asia
and the Middle East of working conditions and opportunities for women and
children. From 1957 to 1958 she represented the International Alliance of
Women at the United Nations.
In the early 1960s Miller became United
Nations representative for the European organization the International Union
for Child welfare, conducting an International Child Welfare Survey (#227) and
participating in various UNICEF projects. She left the United Nations in 1967
at the age of 78.
Miller was among the founders the Workers' Education
Bureau of America and one of the original executive committee members of the
Bryn Mawr Summer School.
In 1917 Frieda S. Miller met Pauline Newman, who arrived in Philadelphia to build a new branch
of the Women’s Trade Union League.
Miller left her position as teacher to help Newman with her work for the
Women's Trade Union. By 1918 they were living together. In 1923 while in
Germany with Newman, Miller adopted a daughter, Elisabeth. Miller and Pauline
moved to Greenwich Village, at 299 West 12th Street, and they raised Miller's
daughter together. The relationship, even if turbulent, lasted until Miller's
death in 1974.
Miller and Newman were part of the tight knit circle
of women surrounding Eleanor Roosevelt.
They visited regularly her at Val-Kill.
Miller had a summer home in
Connecticut and later one in Pennsylvania; she spent the last four years of
her life in a New York City nursing home, the Mary Manning Walsh Home, where
she died on July 21, 1973.
The Papers of Frieda S. Miller, 1909-1973 (inclusive), 1929-1967 (bulk) are
hosted at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women
in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
