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Mary Williams Dewson
(February 18, 1874 - October 22, 1962) U.S.A.

Mary Dewson

Economist and political organizer

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Mary Dewson was born in Quincy, Massachusetts. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1897. For three years she worked as a research economist for the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston, after which she became superintendent of the Massachusetts Girls' Parole Department (1900-12).

In 1911 she served also as secretary of the Commission on Minimum Wage Legislation for Massachusetts. After time spent dairy farming (1912-17), she returned to public service and for two years served as zone chief of the Bureau of Refugees of the American Red Cross in France, during World War I. She was then research secretary of the National Consumers' League (1919-24) and president of the Consumers' League of New York (1925-31).

"Molly" Dewson was an economic expert for the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston; and on the Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration at the start of the New Deal. She worked as an Industrial Economist in the Department of Labor in 1937 when President Roosevelt appointed her to the Social Security Board.

A long-time Democratic Party activist and official, she was in charge of the Womens' Division of the Party and was generally credited with placing many of the high-ranking women in the Roosevelt Administration. A prominent figure in the suffrage movement, Molly Dewson played a major role in the 1932 Presidential campaign by attracting large numbers of female voters to the Roosevelt ticket."

In 1934 FDR asked her to serve on the Advisory Council to his Committee on Economic Security--an experience that led to her interest in the Social Security program and her eventual appointment to the Social Security Board.

Molly Dewson resigned from the Board in 1938 due to health problems and she remained in semi-retirement for the rest of her life. She died at her home in Castine, Maine in October 1962. She lived with her lover Polly Porter for 50 years.

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