Mary Anderson (August 27, 1872 – 1964) was a Swedish-born American
labor activist and an advocate for women in the workplace. A
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
, she rallied support to ratify many new laws to support women and equal rights. Throughout her lifetime, Anderson held a large range of roles, rising from a factory worker to the Director of the Women's Bureau in the
United States Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemp ...
. Anderson's work to protect the rights of women in the workplace made no small impact on the lives of working women across the country.
Biography
Introduction
Mary Anderson was born in
Lidköping
Lidköping () is a locality and the seat of Lidköping Municipality in Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had about
40,000 inhabitants in 2021.
It is situated on the southern shore of Lake Vänern and sometimes refers to itself as "Lidkö ...
, Sweden 1872, daughter of Magnus and Matilda (Johnson) Anderson.
[Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green. ''Notable American Women: The Modern Period : a Biographical Dictionary''. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.] She emigrated to the United States when she was sixteen in 1888. Once in America she worked as a dishwasher at a lumberjacks' boarding house in Ludington, Michigan. She moved to Chicago where she worked in a garment factory and as a shoe stitcher in West Pullman. She joined the
Boot and Shoe Workers Union and was elected president of the women's stitchers Local 94 in 1900.
She became a leader in the
Women's Trade Union League in
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
. She gained valuable experience from the
Women's Trade Union League in
public administration
Public administration, or public policy and administration refers to "the management of public programs", or the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day",Kettl, Donald and James Fessler. 2009. ''The Politics of the ...
. She then applied these skills to her work with the Women's Bureau in the
U.S. Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unem ...
which she was the first director of in 1920. She directed and used the Bureau for 25 years to better the working conditions,
wage
A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work (human activity), work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include wiktionary:compensatory, compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailin ...
s, and hours for women. And even once she retired from office Mary Anderson continued to fight for the rights of working women.
Woman's Trade Union League 1900–1919
The main goal of this league was to
organize women and to gain support for a union. This union would strive to get safer factory conditions for women workers. Mary Anderson had first hand experience of the very dangerous working conditions of the factory floor and knew things had to be improved.
It was during Anderson's time in the WTUL that's she began a friendship with
Jane Addams
Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860May 21, 1935) was an American Settlement movement, settlement activist, Social reform, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, philosopher, and author. She was a leader in the history of s ...
who would greatly influence Anderson's views on helping all people, not just women. In Anderson's eulogy to Addams she tells of how, "'She was not one of those feminist who are for women alone. Her heart and her brilliant mind recognized that as long as one group could be exploited society as a whole must suffer'".
Anderson too believed that the work of feminists should not be constrained to only women's issues but more importantly address broader social concerns.
40,000 garment workers went on strike in Chicago in 1910. This was Anderson's and the WTUL chance to organize these women and to use the tactics of the male unions to gain better pay for pant makers and better working conditions. During the strike the main goal of the WTUL was to relieve distress of families by donating food clothes and coal to those who were not getting paid and had very little money saved up.
The strike seemed to be working as employers were beginning to give in to the demands for collective bargaining of the garment workers. However the strike was abruptly called off by the
United Garment Workers without any forewarning. Anderson was disappointed and shocked. She felt that for how much people endured through the strike they gained very little from their suffering. This failure of the method of collective organization to achieve the WTUL's goals in the garment strike would affect Anderson's views later on in her political career. She defiantly rejected of the
National Woman's Party proposed Equal Rights Amendment and embraced the idea of
Social Justice
Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has of ...
Feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
.
Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor 1920–1944
Mary Anderson became the head of the
Women's Bureau in March 1920, replacing her friend and fellow activist
Mary van Kleeck
Mary Abby van Kleeck (June 26, 1883June 8, 1972) was an American social scientist of the 20th century. She was a notable figure in the American labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific management and a planned economy.
Of Dutch descen ...
. She was going to lead the Bureau and use its influence to advance her agenda of Social Justice Feminism. Social Justice Feminism is using legislation to bring social justice and improvement of lives. The ultimate goal was to use women's labor legislation to set precedents so that the state would protect all workers, male and female, from the very real oppressions of the employer in the work place. Here you can see Addams influence on Anderson, with her goal to help society at large, not just women.
However, after World War I and the ratification of the
19th Amendment there was a rhetorical reform going through government of Administrative Orthodoxy, that placed an emphasis on scientific objectivity and expertise as the criteria for action within the Bureaucracy. Men in government argued that because women now had equal say in voting on policies that there was no need for gender specific legislation based on old ideals of women's subordination to men and thus needing their own gendered protection in the law. By today's standard, 2012, these men in government would appear to be in consensus with modern feminists. However, the reality was even with the vote women were still oppressed by their lower wage than men and conditions in the factory were still horrible as Anderson saw firsthand when she toured the U.S. war factories in 1917. Mary Anderson had to figure out a way to pass legislation that would bring social justice and protect women from the realities of factory work while battling with the ideology of Administrative Orthodoxy.
From her life experiences, of first hand factory work, witnessing the Chicago garment worker strike, actively engaged in the work of the WTUL, and her factory tour in 1917, Mary Anderson could arguably be called an expert on Women's struggle in the factory. All that was left to do to fulfill the Administrative Orthodoxy requirements was to have the expert collect data, or scientific objectivity. This is precisely what the Women's Bureau did. One example was filing and publishing reports on African American female workers. By focusing the Bureau's efforts and minority groups that other public administrators' largely ignored Anderson was able to resolve her dilemma of getting legislative social justice for women while staying within the government's trend or Administrative Orthodoxy. Again we see Addams influence on Anderson, helping society at large by giving attention to ignored minority groups.
Women's Bureau vs. National Woman's Party and the Equal Rights Movement
Once the 19th Amendment was ratified and women received the vote the National Woman's Party set its sights on a new goal, an
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States, United States Constitution that would explicitly prohibit sex discrimination. It is not currently a part of the Constitution, though its Ratifi ...
that would end all discrimination against women. This included the social justice legislation that Anderson and the Women's Bureau had gathered all that data and filed reports to enact in order to protect women. The NWP thought women should get equality in the work place by organizing into unions like men do. Anderson opposed this idea because of the anticlimactic end to the Chicago garment worker strike. The chasm here is one of ideal versus reality. The NWP had very strong ideological views of what it viewed as women's equality i.e. the ERA. However, the reality of the situation, as Anderson knew from scores of data collected by the Women's Bureau, was that not just women but all workers needed protection from harsh conditions allowed to exist in the factory. Mary Anderson would do all she could to prevent an Equal Rights Amendment from being ratified. Not because she thought women were weaker, but only because there was a real societal need for protective legislation.
Thus, through some tactical political maneuvering Mary Anderson was able to select who would head the NWP committee to study the effects of women specific labor legislation. She chose her close friend and committed social justice advocate
Mary van Kleeck
Mary Abby van Kleeck (June 26, 1883June 8, 1972) was an American social scientist of the 20th century. She was a notable figure in the American labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific management and a planned economy.
Of Dutch descen ...
to be the technical advisor of the committee. Leaders on the NWP and Kleeck bickered and debated on every point making it virtually impossible for the committee to do anything. Eventually members on the committee who supported the ERA left the group, and the Women's Bureau and Mary Anderson successfully defended the policies they had worked so hard to enact.
After The Bureau 1945–1964
Mary Anderson retired from the Women's Bureau in 1944. She never married,
and did not end her efforts to gain woman's equality in the work place. She stayed active by
lobbying
Lobbying is a form of advocacy, which lawfully attempts to directly influence legislators or government officials, such as regulatory agency, regulatory agencies or judiciary. Lobbying involves direct, face-to-face contact and is carried out by va ...
Washington D.C. for equal pay for equal work by men and women in the factory. She became the legislative representative of the
National Consumers League and again found statistical facts to point out the real abuses in
wage discrimination against women in union contracts. While the unions preached the ideology of
equal pay for equal work, they also had a "wage scale" which posed a reality of a set pay for men and a separate lower set pay for women. She goes on to state that with more women in the work force it is "simple justice", social justice, to give men and women equal pay for equal work.
Mary Anderson was the first "'up from the ranks" labor woman to head an executive department of the
federal government
A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...
. She served under five U.S. presidents during her tenure at the Women's Bureau. During this time, there was more than a doubling of the number of women working. She did everything in her, the Bureau's, and legislative power to protect the rights of working women.
Autobiography
*''Woman At Work: The Autobiography of Mary Anderson as Told to Mary N. Winslow'' (Minneapolis,MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press. 1951)
See also
*
Labor Hall of Honor
References
Further reading
* Foner, Philip S., ''Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I'' (The Free Press; 1979)
* McGuire, John Thomas. "Gender and the Personal Shaping of Public Administration in the United States: Mary Anderson and the Women's Bureau, 1920–1930." ''Public Administration Review'' 72.2 (2012): 265–271.
* Orleck, Annelise, ''Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965'' (The University of North Carolina Press. 1995)
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External links
Director's GalleryWomen's Trade Union League and Its Leaders
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Mary
1872 births
1964 deaths
American women trade unionists
People from Lidköping
Swedish emigrants to the United States
Boot and Shoe Workers' Union people
Trade unionists from Illinois
American trade unionists of Swedish descent