Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Anderson, Mary Reid
ANDERSON, MARY REID (1880–1921), women's labour organizer, was born at Glasgow 13 August 1880, the eldest daughter of John Duncan Macarthur, proprietor of a drapery establishment, by his wife, Anne Elizabeth Martin. She was educated at a school in Glasgow, and afterwards studied for a time in Germany at Diez a. d. Lahn. On her return she entered her father's business and became interested in the conditions of shop employees. Moved by their grievances she joined in 1901 the shop assistants' union, and through her interest in this organization was led to work for the improvement of women's labour conditions in general. Becoming known to Sir Charles Dilke [q. v.] and to Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, the honorary secretary to the Women's Trade Union League, Miss Macarthur was appointed, through their influence, general secretary to the League (1903), a position in which she at once came into prominence. She now began to organize women workers everywhere and, managing always to lend dramatic quality to her struggles, obtained wide publicity and sympathy for her cause. Much of her work was connected with the extension of the trade union movement. She created a very large number of local unions, and later stabilized these small organizations by amalgamating them to form the National Federation of Women Workers (1906), of which she became secretary. Another side of her activities was concerned with the question of sweated labour and the establishment of a minimum wage for sweated women workers. In 1906 she assisted in forming the National Anti-Sweating League, of which she became a prominent member, impressing the select parliamentary committee on work in the home (1907) by her evidence in favour of a legal minimum wage. Her work for the women chain-makers of Cradley Heath was especially notable. She was elected by them as a workers' representative on the chain-making trade board (1909), and after this board had fixed legal minimum rates of wages she led in 1910 a memorable strike of the women in order to compel the employers to pay the new rates of wages without the delay permitted by the Trade Boards Act of 1909.
In 1911 Miss Macarthur married Mr. William Crawford Anderson, chairman of the executive committee of the Independent Labour Party, and from 1914 to 1918 member for the Attercliffe division of Sheffield. In 1914, at the request of Queen Mary, Mrs. Anderson became honorary secretary of the central committee on women's employment, and in this office, and as a member of the committee of the Prince of Wales's fund, and of numerous reconstruction and other committees, such as the national insurance advisory committee, she rendered important service to the country during the European War. She exerted a powerful influence on behalf of munition workers, and was one of the authors of the Wages (Temporary Regulation) Act (1918), under which wages were stabilized after the armistice. At the general election of 1918 she spoke in many constituencies on behalf of the labour party, and standing herself as labour candidate for the Stourbridge division of Worcestershire, was nearly successful in winning the seat.
The deaths of both her parents not long after the general election was followed by the death from pneumonia of her husband in February 1919. In search of distraction Mrs. Anderson visited America. In 1920 she paid a second visit to attend as a representative of Great Britain the first labour conference convened under the League of Nations. This conference, and the possibility which it revealed of alleviating the lot of the workers throughout the world, rekindled her faith and ardour, and she returned to England to arouse enthusiasm for the ‘labour charter’ which she had helped to fashion at Washington. In her oratory, which was always moving, there was detected at this period a new and deeper note which her friends attributed to the maturity that comes of suffering. But at the zenith of her powers she became ill and underwent an operation which revealed the presence of a malignant ailment from which there was no hope of recovery. A second operation was attempted, without success, and she died at Golders Green 1 January 1921, leaving one daughter.
[Mary A. Hamilton, Mary Macarthur: A Biographical Sketch, 1925; personal knowledge]