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.

Mary Anderson had first hand experience of the very dangerous working conditions of the factory floor and knew things had to be improved.

[3]: 17  Anderson too believed that the work of feminists should not be constrained to only women's issues but more importantly address broader social concerns.

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.

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 Feminism.

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.

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.

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.

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 to be the technical advisor of the committee.

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.

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.