AUGUSTA — A state lawmaker from Lewiston says it is time to put a woman on U.S. paper currency and wants that woman to be a Mainer.

“America hasn’t changed its paper currency for many years,” state Rep. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “There is a national group organizing for this change, and one of the people on their list is Maine’s own Frances Perkins.”

Rotundo said Perkins’ image should replace that of Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, on $20 bills.

Perkins, who called Maine home, “was a self-made woman who defied the contemporary stereotypes of the proper roles for women,” according to a release issued by Rotundo. Perkins graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1902 as the president of her class and became a social worker.

In New York, she earned a master’s degree in political science at Columbia University and was so prominent in her work for the people of New York that former President Theodore Roosevelt recommended her for a role on the commission investigating the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, an event that Perkins personally witnessed.

She went on to become the first woman to serve in a U.S. president’s cabinet. She served as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor for 12 years and was the architect of Social Security, national unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, child labor laws, the 40-hour work week and the minimum wage.

“Frances Perkins dedicated her life to improving conditions for America’s working families, yet she is in many respects lost to history,” Rotundo said. “Let’s bring her significant contributions to this nation to light and ensure that she is recognized at last for all that she did for us as a country. Vote for Frances Perkins and let’s get a Maine woman on the $20 bill.”

An organization named Women on 20s is polling online, inviting the public to help choose the first woman to grace the $20 bill. Visitors to the website, www.womenon20s.org, are asked to choose three women among the 15 whose lives and contributions are summarized.

The deadline for the first ballot is March 31. A second ballot will allow people to choose from the top three vote-getters from the first round. This recommendation will be put forward to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who has the final authority on whether to change the currency.

sthistle@sunmediagroup.net

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