Maud Younger

This oil portrait of Maud Younger hangs in the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Washington, DC.

“Maud Younger (San Francisco, CA) Jan. 10, 1870 - June 25, 1936, inherited fortune but lived in NYC College Settlement for 5 years, took job as waitress to understand lives of working women, helped form and lead union, called ‘the millionaire waitress,’ lobbied and organized, helped win 8-hour-day labor law for California women, spoke all over California in 1911 campaign, drove a team of six horses pulling a suffrage float down San Francisco's Market Street in Labor Day Parade, organized Wage Earners Equal Suffrage League, became Alice Paul's lieutenant and chief lobbyist, headed National Woman's Party Congressional Committee which emphasized local pressure on Congressmen rather than cordial relations, compelling speaker, toured country defending suffrage hunger strikers, helped initiate and fought for Equal Rights Amendment.” – UMD – 75 Suffragists.

This photo is from an article in the Chicago Daily Book, June 9, 1916, entitled “A 'Godmother' of the New Woman’s Party”.  

See The NWP's biography of Maud Younger here.

Miss Younger's photo also appeared in a an article in the The Washington Times, May 13, 1915, entitled “The Millionaire Waitress Explains how She Became Organizer of Labor.”

 ”I got a position in a restaurant, and for many months worked about as a waitress. I accepted the most poorly paying positions and worked under the most distressing circumstances, all of the time, however, gathering material for the evidence which I intended to use for the betterment of the other waitresses. I was elected president of their trade union. I assisted in several strikes, and after that – well. I just began to be sent for, here and there, by other trade unions and organizations until I had the strangest job in all the world.”