True grit: Alice Lord demanded respect for working women — and won
When Alice Lord arrived to Seattle from New York around 1892, she and her husband were joining the flood of newcomers drawn to the western boomtown. In the years to come, the Gold Rush would put Seattle on a wave that lasted a decade, as more than 100,000 would-be miners coursed through the city, outfitting themselves, buying meals, hotel rooms, and their passage north. Lord would hold one of the many jobs benefiting from this golden wave, waiting tables at a downtown restaurant.
Waitresses were usually unskilled and single at the time, their pink-collar job seen as just one step up from domestic service. Like many of the citys female typists, store clerks, laundry workers, and more, the waitresses were newcomers far from home, drawn from farms and villages to the bright lights of the big city. Most elite restaurants employed male waiters, and waitresses tended to work in second and third tier eateries. To keep their jobs they did what they were told, walking endlessly, fetching, and often being called to wash dishes and mop floors.
A single waitress, a woman on her own, could not stand up against the authority of her boss and the censure of her community at the time.
Alice Lord changed that. In March 1900, Lord and 64 other local women founded Waitresses Union, Local 240 also known as the Waitresses Association of Seattle one of the earliest womens unions to gain their charter from the national American Federation of Labor (AFL). Lord was elected president shortly thereafter, and represented the citys waitresses as union president or business agent for nearly 40 years. And in turn, she became one of Seattles most prominent advocates for womens rights, working to improve conditions at home, in the factories, and especially in Seattles restaurants.
http://features.crosscut.com/true-grit-alice-lord-waitresses-union-seattle-working-womens-rights