[...] Beginning in 1900 with the founding of the Seattle waitresses’ local, waitresses formed all-female unions in Chicago, San Francisco, and other communities across the country; they also joined mixed culinary locals of waiters, cooks, and bartenders. In contrast to the sporadic organizing among women telephone operators, clericals, and other female service workers, waitresses sustained their organizational impulse for more than seventy years. At their peak in the 1940s and 1950s, union waitresses represented nearly one-fourth of the trade nationally. In such union strongholds as San Francisco, Detroit, and New York, a majority of female food servers worked under union contract. Indeed, only the institutions built by women in the garment trades appeared to rival waitress unions in terms of influence and longevity.