From collection Candidates
Mary E. McDowell unsuccessfully campaigned on the Progressive ticket for the Board of Commissioners in Cook County, Illinois in 1914. She waged her campaign in conjunction with fellow Progressive candidate and Settlement worker, Harriet E. Vittum. McDowell was born on November 30, 1854 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Malcolm and Jane Welsh McDowell. At the age of 20, McDowell was drawn to Chicago by Jane Addams' Hull House. Inspired by her time at the Hull House, she went on to head the University of Chicago's Settlement House from its opening in 1894. The settlement would later be renamed the Mary McDowell Settlement. She dedicated most of her life to the settlement, working to establish English language classes, playgrounds, vocational schools and other much needed neighborhood services. McDowell was also a suffragist, an advocate of trade unionism, inter-racial understanding and reforms in waste disposal. In 1903, as a representative of the American Federation of Labor Convention, she worked with several others to found the national Women's Trade Union League and later headed the Chicago branch of the WTUL. During WWI she worked to ensure safe working conditions and decent wages for women in factories. In the 1920's she continued her work on labor rights as Chicago's Commissioner of the Department of Public Welfare. Outside of her labor concerns, McDowell founded the Women's City Club, was the first president of the Illinois Trade Union League, a member of the Chicago Urban League and the NAACP and founded the Interracial Committee for Women after the 1919 Chicago Race Riots. McDowell died in October 1936 at the age of 81.
