Dewson went on to take over Roosevelt's role as head of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Campaign Committee.

[2] Dewson's "Reporter Plan" mobilized thousands of women to spread information about the New Deal legislation and garner support for it.

[4] She was not concerned with her appearance, and preferred to play with "boy's" toys like paper soldiers instead of the traditional dolls made for young girls.

[2] During her time at the WEIU, Dewson conducted statistical studies and reported on women's poor working conditions.

The lack of reading material for the course inspired her to write and publish The Twentieth Century Expense Book (1899).

After returning from Europe, Dewson worked as Florence Kelley's principal assistant in the National Consumers' League campaign for state minimum wage laws for women and children.

From 1925 to 1931, Dewson served as president of the New York Consumers' League, working closely with Eleanor Roosevelt (ER), leading the lobbying effort of the Women's Joint Legislative Conference and playing a central role in the passage of a 1930 New York law limiting women to forty-eight-hour work weeks.

As president of the New York Consumers' League, Dewson worked and socialized with Frances Perkins and Clara Mortenson Beyer, both of would go on to work in the United States Department of Labor under President Roosevelt, and who played important roles in New Deal era labor economics.

It was during this time that Dewson entered politics more personally, organizing Democratic women for Al Smith's presidential campaign at Eleanor Roosevelt's request.

Because of her work on FDR's campaigns (and ER's intense lobbying), Dewson was appointed head of the Democratic National Committee's Women's Division (DNC).

She created the Reporter Plan, which educated female party workers on New Deal programs so that they could explain them to voters.

Dewson met her life partner Mary "Polly" Porter in 1909, when both women were working at the Massachusetts State Industrial School for Girls.

[1][8] In 1913, the Porter-Dewsons bought a dairy farm near the central Massachusetts hamlet of South Berlin and briefly became "gentlewoman farmers.

Feminists Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman lived there, as did Communist Party activists Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester.