Readers followed the pantomime adventures of the mute, bald-headed Henry in strips which he signed with his familiar signature displaying an enlarged "S": Carl AnderSon.

Anderson initially worked in his father's planing mill in Des Moines, Iowa,[2] where he developed carpentry skills, became a cabinetmaker, and invented a patented folding desk, which is still being manufactured today.

His strip The Filipino and the Chick ran on the Sunday page of the World, attracting the attention of William Randolph Hearst, who offered more money at his New York Journal.

With the Great Depression looming and his markets diminishing, Anderson was 65 years old when he left New York in 1930, returning to Madison to care for his dying father.

Anderson lived in Madison with his three sisters in the house his father built at 834 Prospect Place near Lake Mendota, and he resumed his earlier trade as a cabinetmaker while teaching night classes.